


even sinners have hearts

by seventhstar



Series: bad people in good love [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Criminals, Blood and Violence, Gangs, Heavy Angst, Kidnapping, Love at First Sight, M/M, Superpowers, Telepathy, soft dark victuuri, this is basically a powered criminal au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-21 09:48:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11354958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhstar/pseuds/seventhstar
Summary: Alexei Ivanov is watching Yuuri as he lifts the cup to his mouth. His lips part to drink; Yuuri has never wanted to be a mouthful of sake more.I have to kill him,Yuuri thinks, and he stands up and announces to the room the time and place of the tour he’s giving tomorrow.Or, the one where Viktor is a telepath, Yuuri is a man of many talents, both of them are criminals, and they're madly in love.





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> dear discord, STOP ENABLING ME

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alexei Ivanov is watching Yuuri as he lifts the cup to his mouth. His lips part to drink; Yuuri has never wanted to be a mouthful of sake more.
> 
>  _I have to kill him,_ Yuuri thinks, and he stands up and announces to the room the time and place of the tour he’s giving tomorrow.

Yuuri is honored, of course, but he’s also kind of pissed.

With his sister as gang leader, with Minako as second, with his family’s inn as headquarters, Yuuri was reasonably certain that he would be offered initiation into the Foxes. But with so many connections, with Yuuri’s own mediocrity, he was also reasonably certain he’d be offered something difficult, something that would prove his worth. He was terrified.

And he was wrong. He’s being given a free pass, essentially, a token challenge. And he’s mad.

Even a weakling like Yuuri has pride. He wants to be taken seriously, even if he’s the only member of the Katsuki clan to have no powers.

He wants to believe that Mari and Minako have more faith in him than he does in himself, but here he is, planning to kill some disrespectful foreign tourist for the honor of the Foxes. _Poor guy,_ Yuuri thinks, _probably has no idea what he’s done._ He feels a stab of pity, and smothers it.

Alexei Ivanov. Yuuri memorized the name, and now he’s lurking in the common room serving drinks to guests, waiting for him to appear. His father described him to Yuuri: tall, silvery hair, handsome, very Russian.

There’s no one else in the onsen who matches that description, and from what Yuuri has gathered, the Russian is a typical foreigner with no manners, so he’s already formulated a plan. Bow a lot, offer everyone a tour of Hasetsu, let the guests ogle the view of the cherry blossoms, lure Ivanov off somewhere with the promise of an authentic local view, and then stab him in the back of the neck.

 _Easy,_ Yuuri thinks, palms sweating. He bends to pour the sake, and at that moment Alexei Ivanov walks into the room.

The sake spills.

Alexei Ivanov is breathtaking — literally breathtaking, Yuuri’s lungs stop functioning as soon he comes into the room — with hair like starlight, with broad shoulders and bony wrists, with long white feet. He sits down at the nearest table with unspeakable grace, a faerie king come to life, and gestures to Yuuri for sake.

Somehow, Yuuri manages to come to his side, kneel down, and pour him a drink without spilling a drop. The puddle of sake he left behind on the tatami is filling the room with its scent. His mother is offering him a perfect hostess smile but her eyes say he’s in trouble. Yuuri doesn’t care.

Alexei Ivanov is watching Yuuri as he lifts the cup to his mouth. His lips part to drink; Yuuri has never wanted to be a mouthful of sake more.

 _I have to kill him,_ Yuuri thinks, and he stands up and announces to the room the time and place of the tour he’s giving tomorrow.

If he jerks off later to the way Alexi Ivanov’s throat bobbed as he swallowed, well. Yuuri is only human.

 

 

 

He brings Alexei to the ice rink.

That wasn’t the plan. The plan was to take him up the hill, using a trail none of the tourists ever take because it’s narrow and unmarked, and stab him while he ogled the ocean below. But Yuuri loves that spot, and doesn’t want to ruin it with the memory of Alexei’s dead body, so he takes Alexei to the rink instead.

“There are some very famous skaters who came out of Hasetsu,” Yuuri says as he guides Alexei through the service entrance. He’s counting on Alexei not knowing anything about figure skating, and is proved right when he shows more interest in the Zamboni parked on the ice than he does in Yuuri’s entirely fictional description of Hasetsu’s hometown champions.

Alexei chatters happily about engines to him — he says he’s an engineer — and his English is charmingly accented, his enthusiasm for the topic infectious. Yuuri actually waits for him to come to a pause in his lecture before he points out a poster on the far side of the rink and draws the knife.

 _One quick thrust,_ he thinks, _just like I practiced,_ and the knife comes within an inch of Alexei’s neck before Alexei whirls around and elbows him in the face.

“You’re fast,” he says admiringly, right before he seizes Yuuri by the front of his shirt and slams him up against the boards.

Yuuri is bent back, one of Alexei’s hands holding him by the hair, the other splayed over his shoulder. The knife is lost somewhere on the floor, but it may as well be on the moon. Alexei’s face is only inches away; his eyes are the color of a coral reef.

“Hold still,” he says, brow furrowed, and every muscle in Yuuri’s body seizes without any input from his brain. He tries to move, and can’t, and when he strains Alexei sighs. “You’ll only hurt yourself.”

This must be Alexei’s power at work. Incredible, Yuuri thinks, and he’s been crazy since he first laid eyes on Alexei, or at least that’s the excuse he’ll give later for the frisson of desire that runs through him. Alexei’s hand in his hair might be meant as a threat but it feels like a caress. If Yuuri could move he wouldn’t.

_Is he doing this to me?_

“No, darling, that’s all you,” Alexei says. His grip loosens; Yuuri’s body responds to his commands again.

Yuuri should run, or fight, or do something, but all he can think is that Alexei could crush him like a bug with a thought, and instead of being afraid, like a reasonable person, Yuuri’s whole body is buzzing, desire running through his veins like he’s been touched with a live wire.

He wants to kiss him. He wants it more than air, and finally something in this wild encounter goes right: Alexei groans and presses his mouth over Yuuri’s. The edge of the boards dig into Yuuri’s spine. Alexei tastes like breath mints. His initiation, the Foxes, all of it is forgotten as Yuuri claws at the back of Alexei’s jacket and thrusts his hips against him with no reason or rhythm.

“Please,” he says between kisses.

“Yes,” Alexei agrees, and shoves his hand down Yuuri’s pants.

They lick into each others’ mouths as Alexei strokes Yuuri’s cock with expert skill and Yuuri reciprocates in what he thinks must be the clumsiest handjob ever given. Alexei feels impossibly thick; Yuuri’s fingers are slick with precome as he grips him. Yuuri is dimly embarrassed but Alexei is making him feel so good, getting him off faster than Yuuri has ever managed on his own, and it’s all he can do to keep up.

He comes first, but Alexei is gasping into his shoulder before long, and then they’re both on the ground, Yuuri in his lap, sticky and flushed and unable to look anywhere but into each other’s eyes.

“No one’s gotten the drop on me in a long time.”

“You say that like you didn’t kick my ass.”

Alexei looks at him. Yuuri has the sense he’s seeing something more than what Yuuri does when he looks in the mirror. Can he read minds? Can he see all the irrational thoughts blooming in Yuuri’s heart?

“Yuuri Katsuki,” he says. “You surprise me.”

Yuuri knows, somehow, that this is a great compliment. In any other circumstance he would be horrified that his face heats.

“What’s your name?” he asks. He leans in. “Your real name.”

“Viktor. Viktor Nikiforov.”

 _Do you believe in love at first sight_ , Yuuri thinks. His whole heart is about to burst with the force of this feeling, something more powerful than nerves animating it.

“I do now,” Viktor says, and Yuuri surrenders to the madness, lets himself be kissed again.

(They’re married in Russia, two weeks later. The Foxes look for him, but they’re only a local gang, and eventually Yuuri Katsuki fades from most of their memories.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comment to save me from the trash


	2. that boy is a monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viktor doesn’t pick up. Yuuri waits, dread cold in his veins, as the call goes to voicemail. If Viktor can’t answer, he’ll turn down his power limiter and contact Yuuri telepathically. Even if Viktor were mid-firefight, he knows not to ignore Yuuri’s calls. 
> 
> He tries the emergency number. Voicemail.
> 
> He waits a full minute. Nothing — the touch of Viktor’s mind does not not come.
> 
> “I have to leave,” he says, dazed, and he shoves his phone into his pocket and goes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i regret all of this

Phichit is fifty percent of the reason Yuuri took this job.  
  
_You need to get out of house and talk to people,_ Viktor said.  
  
_I talk to people._  
  
_People who aren’t me,_ Viktor insisted. _You’re lonely, darling, I worry about you._  
  
There’s no point in arguing about his feelings with someone who can read his mind, so Yuuri acquiesced. Here he is, in Detroit, working this backwater corporate espionage job with a third rate crew (except for Phichit, who is only here because he’s a local, and Chris, who...Yuuri doesn’t know, exactly. It must be a personal reason — Chris’s services are normally expensive — but Chris is Viktor’s friend, so Yuuri doesn’t waste time on threat assessment for him.)  
  
The weather in Detroit is terrible, rain pouring down in grey sheets, and Yuuri misses Viktor like a bruised rib, pain with every breath from the lack of him. They’ve gone too long without working; three months of uninterrupted domesticity, and Yuuri is more codependent than ever. Viktor is probably right, he does need to get out of the house, if only so Viktor can have some peace, but…still.  
  
“Do you think I could fit through the vents?” Phichit asks.  
  
“I thought you were a behind the scenes kind of guy.”  
  
“You don’t think I could crawl through the vents, rappel down the elevator shaft, and make off with the goods?”  
  
“These vents are only thirty centimeters wide,” Yuuri says. He holds up his hands to indicate the size. “Maybe you should send your hamsters instead?”  
  
Phichit is their tech guy for this job. He’s supposed to be helping circumvent the electronic security measures and bolstering their fake identities, but so far he hasn’t had to touch his keyboard. _The job is a joke,_ Yuuri thinks. Maybe he’ll take off; there has to be somewhere that sells hot mozzarella sticks around here. He’ll take Phichit along, too, bribe him with the promise of clubbing later on. They’ll eat, party, see who can steal a valet parking uniform and make off with the flashiest car.  
  
Maybe if he dances the ache in in his chest will ease.  
  
He doesn’t know why he misses Viktor so much.  
  
“Slacking off?” Chris comes into the rented office they’re using to plan. There are three local nobodies on the job with them, but they stay in the other room, no doubt grumbling about the arrogance of the foreigners. “Figure out how we’re going to steal the drive yet?”  
  
Yuuri shrugs. “If one of the guys is a room service attendant and his cover is good, can’t he just make a delivery and stick it in one of the dishes? One of the others can pretend to be a dishwasher and take it from there.”  
  
“Yeah, cheap hotels go through dishwashers like Chris goes through condoms,” Phichit says.  
  
“Practical and simple. I like it.” Chris laughs. “We’re not exactly earning our paychecks here, are we?”  
  
Yuuri’s paycheck is exorbitant. Viktor negotiates his pay for him, because he says Yuuri undersells himself. Yuuri thinks Viktor oversells him, but Viktor enjoys haggling and Yuuri enjoys never having to worry about money, so he lets it happen. He’s surprised, though, that the client who was willing to shell out for Yuuri to come out for Detroit wasn’t willing to shell out for a six man team of talent, not three decent criminals and three amateurs.  
  
It’s almost like —  
  
Yuuri lunges for his phone.  
  
“Yuuri?”  
  
Viktor doesn’t pick up. Yuuri waits, dread cold in his veins, as the call goes to voicemail. If Viktor can’t answer, he’ll turn down his power limiter and contact Yuuri telepathically. Even if Viktor were mid-firefight, he knows not to ignore Yuuri’s calls.  
  
He tries the emergency number. Voicemail.  
  
He waits a full minute. Nothing — the touch of Viktor’s mind does not not come.  
  
“I have to leave,” he says, dazed, and he shoves his phone into his pocket and goes.  
  
“Yuuri?” Phichit follows him out of the room and down the stairs. Yuuri isn’t wearing his poncho, but he barely feels the rain as he sprints out of the building.  
  
Where in Detroit can he charter a private flight? Should he head straight to Paris, where Viktor was supposed to be working? But Viktor last spoke to him yesterday evening; that’s over twelve hours ago. He could be anywhere by now.  
  
_Calm,_ he tells himself. The soothing voice in his head still sounds like Minako, even after all these years. _Calm. What do you have? What do you need?_  
  
Viktor isn’t answering him, so he must be in danger. If Viktor was capable of contacting Yuuri, he would have; he’s more than strong enough to reach Yuuri from France. So he’s been rendered incapable of using his powers, or he’s choosing not to.  
  
Either way Yuuri has to rescue him. _If Viktor is de_ — he cuts that thought off. _Viktor is alive. He has to be alive._  
  
Viktor wouldn’t have been grabbed if Yuuri was there to protect him; therefore, this job must be an excuse to get Yuuri out of the way. So what he needs is to talk to the client and find out who the enemy is. Viktor is the one who found this job for him, but he did say he’d run it by Phichit before agreeing.  
  
And Phichit is right here. Yuuri has what he needs.  
  
“You checked this job out before agreeing, right?”  
  
“Yeah, it’s legit. I know it looks bad, but it’s being run by the Leroys through a proxy.”  
  
“The Leroys?” Yuuri asks. “The Canadians?”  
  
“Yeah, they’re distantly related to French royalty and they never shut up about it. Their kid is that singer on Youtube — you know, with the voice? Sounds like a rock Justin Bieber? Memey?”  
  
“The Leroys,” Yuuri mumbles. Viktor has never mentioned any problems with French Canadians, other than a snobby disdain for what he calls ‘their peasant accent’. “I need to talk to Chris.”  
  
“Chris? He’s back at the office —”  
  
“Pick him up and bring him to…” Yuuri considers, then rattles off an address. “I’ll meet you there. I gotta look something up.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Be there in an hour.”  
  
“Yuuri —”  
  
“Are you helping me or not, Phichit?”  
  
“Of course I am, I still owe you for Bali.”  
  
Yuuri almost lost a finger in Bali, but what he remembers is Viktor refusing to do anything but lie under an umbrella by the pool for three days while Yuuri rubbed sunblock on his back and made him drinks and kissed every inch of Viktor’s sun-warmed skin.  
  
He shudders. The rain has seeped through his clothes. The sky is dark. Viktor is out there, waiting for him.  
  
Yuuri goes.  
  
  


 

 

 _“Ugh,” Viktor groans, cradling his bloodied nose. Yuuri lowers his fist and watches the blood seep between his fingers; he should get Viktor a tissue, but he’s paralyzed by guilt._  
  
_“Sorry,” he whispers._  
  
_Viktor smiles at him, or at least Yuuri thinks it’s meant to be a smile, based on the gentle concern Viktor is projecting at him. It looks more like a grimace of pain._  
  
_“Did you have a nightmare?”_  
  
_“No,” Yuuri says. He frowns. “Can’t you tell?”_  
  
_“Mm, not always. Dreamsharing is...disquieting, so I turn up my limiter at night sometimes.”_  
  
_“Oh.”_  
  
_If Yuuri could read minds, he’s pretty sure he’d do it constantly and compulsively. He can’t quite understand how Viktor restrains himself so much._  
  
_“What’s wrong?”_

 

 

  
  
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Chris says as the cabin lights turn off, “but where, exactly, are you taking us?”  
  
Luck was with Yuuri; there was a private flight going from Detroit to Toronto that night. The pilot didn’t want to be bribed, so now he’s tied up and sleeping in the cargo hold.. The flight plan is filed and the plane is fueled and in good condition, so all Yuuri has to do is the actual flying.  
  
“Toronto.”  
  
“I don’t want to go to Toronto.” Chris sighs. “What is this about, Yuuri?”  
  
“It’s Viktor.”  
  
“...ah. What do you need?”  
  
Yuuri closes his eyes for a moment, relieved. “For now, I need to know if Viktor had any French Canadian enemies.”  
  
“French Canadian? I can’t think of anyone.”  
  
“I see.”  
  
That leaves Yuuri’s little idea, then. He went and looked up Jean-Jacques Leroy, scion of the Leroy family, internet singing sensation, exactly the kind of person Viktor hated. JJ, as he calls himself, is familiar. Yuuri has seen him before.  
  
What he remembers doesn’t exactly make sense, but without Viktor there to use his powers to tease out the memory from the muddle in Yuuri’s mind, he has no choice but to rely on what he thinks is true.  
  
There are only two reasons to take Viktor. Either to use him, or to ransom him. If it’s the latter, and Viktor is in Toronto as Yuuri suspects, then someone will contact him soon. That contact, if it comes, will confirm Yuuri’s suspicions, but he can’t wait.  
  
“Get some sleep,” Yuuri says. He stares at the line of clouds on the horizon. Only an hour until they land; he’ll need them well-rested if they’re going to be of any use. “We’ll be there soon.  
  
_Not soon enough,_ he thinks. There’s no time.  
  
  


 

 

 _Yuuri looks down. “I forgot.”_  
  
_“You —” He cocks his head, and Yuuri feels the touch of Viktor’s mind against his own. “Ah.”_  
  
_He’s not used to sharing a bed, or a room. This apartment is smaller than the inn, and less crowded, and Viktor’s dog is so big she could eat Vicchan. Yuuri can’t blame his outburst on nightmares, only on his own stupidity; he jerked awake, too hot under the heavy comforter, and forgot that Viktor was here, beside him, arm over his waist._  
  
_“You’re noisy,” Viktor says. He strips one of the pillows, adds, “I hate these sheets,” and wipes his face with the pillowcase._  
  
_Yuuri raises an eyebrow._ He’s _noisy? Viktor thinks the only acceptable volume for music is ‘the furniture is shaking in time to the beat’._

 

 

  
  
Chris parks the stolen car expertly between two unmarked white vans.  
  
“This is a bad part of town,” he remarks pointedly. Phichit sinks down in his seat a bit; he’s inexperienced with work outside a computer lab. The building is nondescript, a grey stone office building with a plate engraved with Lee & Jackson over the front door.  
  
Yuuri has to hand it to Isabella Yang. No one would guess this building was a front for her money laundering and extortion operations.  
  
“What are we doing here?” Phichit asks.  
  
“I have to pick something up for later,” Yuuri says distantly. He digs through the glove compartment and finds a gun there, with two bullets. In addition, there’s a length of lead pipe lying across the backseat. Yuuri snags both before opening the car door.  
  
“Pick up what?” Chris asks. “Yuuri, what the hell is going on?”  
  
Answering their questions will take too long, reveal too much. Yuuri pauses and looks at them over his shoulder.  
  
“Leverage,” he says. He swings the pipe; it’s satisfyingly heavy. “Keep the car running.”  
  
  


 

 

Your thoughts fill up all the rooms, _Viktor thinks at him._  
  
_He can only imagine. Yuuri’s mind is a kaleidoscope; he is learning a thousand new things a day, Russian and kissing and hand to hand combat and how to make borscht and how to be less anxious and how to use a machine pistol and how to get used to the buzz of Viktor’s brain in the background of all Yuuri’s thoughts._  
  
_The power limiter has nine levels, and Yuuri has never seen Viktor turn the dial lower than seven. He’s never seen Viktor take it off for longer than a few minutes, either._  
  
_Bad enough to be an intruder into Viktor’s life — worse to be an intruder in his mind — worst to be the kind of intruder who kicks off the covers and elbows Viktor in the face._

 _He touches Viktor’s swollen nose. It doesn’t look broken, at least._  
  
_“But now we’re even,” Viktor muses, and he projects the memory of hitting Yuuri in the face in the ice rink at him. Yuuri jumps a little as his face stings with phantom pain._  
  
Not unless you were trying to smother me in my sleep, _Yuuri thinks._  
  
_Yuuri thought he was in love, once. Her name was Yuuko; she was two years older than him. He was better at ballet, but she was better on the ice, and she had a right hook that would have made a prizefighter weep with envy. She was a good friend to him; Yuuri still misses her._  
  
_It was a rational love, based on years together, on all her good qualities. Nothing like this forest fire of a love Viktor has lit inside him. Yuuri must be mad, to have come to Russia with this man he barely knows, this powerful and fascinating person upon whom he is utterly dependent._  
  
_Viktor’s arms curl around him again, and Yuuri lets himself be held._  
  
_He knew what he wanted out of life, just six short months ago. Now he only knows the future and Viktor are inexorably intertwined. He’s trying so hard to metamorph into someone else; how else can he keep himself at Viktor’s side?_  
  
_“You don’t need to worry about that,” Viktor says._  
  
_Yuuri is skeptical._  
  
_“Because — I won’t let you go.”_  
  
_Viktor’s mind brushes against his again, and Yuuri feels the ring of truth in Viktor’s words._  
  
_He would never thought he could enjoy being caged. But Yuuri clings to this thought: he belongs to Viktor, now._

 

 

  
  
“What the fuck,” Phichit is saying. Yuuri tries to ignore him; he was in a hurry and didn’t have time to finish hogtying JJ, and now he’s putting up a fight as Yuuri zipties his ankles to his wrists.  
  
“How many of them did you say there were?” Chris asks. He is remarkably calm, considering their screaming captive and the gunfire leaving bullet holes in the trunk of their car. He makes another sudden turn, and one of their pursuers overshoots and crashes into a slow-moving garbage truck in the next lane.  
  
“Like, fifty.”  
  
“Twenty armed,” Yuuri corrects. He peels off one of JJ’s socks and shoves it into his mouth. The screaming goes from unbearable to merely annoying. “Maybe another twenty unarmed.”  
  
“You beat twenty armed men with two bullets and a lead pipe.”  
  
“Just the lead pipe.”  
  
“He used the bullets to blow out the window so we could escape,” Phichit says. His voice is shaking. Has he never been in a firefight? Yuuri didn’t realize. “I thought they’d have bulletproof glass or something.”  
  
“It’s a lot less bulletproof from the inside.”  
  
“Well,” Chris says finally. He pulls out onto the highway. Yuuri spat the address at him earlier as he crammed JJ into the car while bullets whizzed around his ears. To his credit, Chris didn’t even flinch. “That makes sense.”  
  
“Yuuri deflecting bullets with a lead pipe like he’s Matrix-era Keanu Reeves makes _sense?”_  
  
“I always wondered what Viktor saw in you,” Chris says blandly. He accelerates; the car groans loudly in protest. “We need to dump this, any requests?”  
  
“Grab a minivan, we need the trunk space. He’s tall.”  
  
“Oh, god, we kidnapped our boss’s son, there goes my paycheck and my professional reputation.”  
  
“Phichit, shut up.”  
  
“Yuuri —”  
  
“Shut up!” His phone is buzzing. One new message from an unknown number, Toronto area code.  
  
_5:00 PM EST Skype :)_  
  
The sight of that smiling face appended to the message makes Yuuri want to kill. He’ll show Isabella Yang a smile, all right, right before he cuts her throat. If there’s even a mark on Viktor, just one...  
  
It’s almost three now. Yuuri doesn’t have time to set up a new safehouse; he’ll have to take Chris and Phichit to Viktor’s cottage.  
  
So many risks.  
  
_I’m coming,_ Yuuri thinks as loudly as he can. Maybe Viktor can hear him. _I’m coming for you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comment to fertilize my fic garden


	3. burn it to the ground tonight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hello, Yuuri.” Isabella is wearing a red blouse, her hair pin straight, her mouth curved up into a satisfied smile. She’s sitting in a leather armchair that looks like a throne. “I want to talk to you about love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: violence, threats of violence

The call does not come at five.

Yuuri has everything set up, just in case: the computer open on a table, sheets tacked up in the background to hide any identifying features of the cottage, JJ gagged and blindfolded and bound and carefully bloodied.

(The blood isn’t JJ’s; Yuuri nicked himself and bled slowly all over his face. JJ’s been quiet as a mouse ever since.)

“Nice place,” Chris says. He and Phichit are seated behind the computer, out of sight of the webcam. Phichit has dug out two bottles of Viktor’s stupid alcohol-free beer and is drinking it with an expression of pure disgust. The two of them keep looking around the living room curiously, and Yuuri resists the urge to slap them and tell them to stop.

This is a private place. He and Viktor honeymooned here, for one glorious weekend years ago.

Yuuri paces up and down the living room; he’s like a can of shaken soda, sealed shut, unable to relieve the pressure. Everything reminds him of Viktor: the case of Olympic gold medals Viktor has stolen (one from every sport so far), the knives tucked away in secret places because Yuuri has heard too many horror stories about people accidentally shooting themselves with well-hidden guns, the soft dark sweater sitting folded on the counter.

He wishes they were in a bunker, or a dingy warehouse, somewhere where the memories were bloodier. It’s hard to keep hold of his anger when he can’t stop picturing Viktor strapped to a hospital bed somewhere, a faceless surgeon with a bone saw in hand looming above him.

“Viktor has terrible taste in beer,” Phichit says. “Man, I thought he was one of those snobs who only drank champagne with diamonds in the glass.”

“If you don’t like it, stop drinking it.”

“Yuuri—”

“Don’t.”

“You know, I’ve known Viktor a long time now. Longer than you have,” Chris says. “You’re not the only one who’s upset about him getting himself kidnapped, so either you help yourself or you tell us how to help you. Stop moaning.”

“Just shut up.”

Chris continues, relentless. “You’re the one who dragged Phichit and I along, Yuuri. Us sitting around is a waste of time.”

“I know that.”

“Unless you want Viktor to get killed —”

“Chris, lay off,” Phichit says.

“Stop. Stop, I would never—”

“Maybe that is what you wanted? Viktor can be a bit difficult, maybe you wanted to get rid of him. Maybe you left him alone on purpose so that he’d get killed and—”

“No.” Yuuri’s knees give out from under him. He can’t breathe. “No, I would never…I couldn’t…” The room is shaking, or maybe that’s just him, just his weak limbs betraying him. “I would never have let anyone hurt him, I’d kill them first, I’d _die_ first!” His chest is burning. Yuuri clings to the carpet. If only Viktor was here. If only everyone would stop looking at him.

He can’t. He can’t do anything. Viktor might die. There might not even be a ransom. Maybe Viktor will vanish into a lab somewhere and never come out, get vivisected while Yuuri fucking _falls apart_ right here.

“Great work, Giacometti.” Phichit is talking, Yuuri hears him, but he can’t focus in on the words.

“He has to get it together.”

“Does it look like he has it together?”

“Viktor,” Yuuri says. Viktor would know how to handle him. Viktor would protect him. Viktor would…

He tries to control his breathing. One, and two. One, and two. He thinks about Viktor in pain and loses the count immediately. He deserves this, doesn’t he? He should never have left Viktor’s side.

“It’s my fault,” he croaks. “I should have—”

“Shh.” Phichit kneels down beside him. “Come on, Yuuri. Viktor needs you. You gotta get it under control.” He hisses, “Shut up, Chris,” under his breath.

Yuuri tries. He really does. Phichit and Chris are depending on him, and Yuuri needs them.

Something beeps.

It’s the laptop. _Incoming call from Isabella Yang,_ the screen reads.

“Yuuri?”

Yuuri makes himself focus on Viktor’s bloodied face, on the image that haunts him every time he closes his eyes. He’s got to keep it together until he knows Viktor is safe. He has to.

He will.

“Give me a minute,” he says. He lets the call go and pads into the bathroom. He washes his face, puts a cold towel over his eyes to reduce the swelling, straightens his clothes. Nothing can be done about his red eyes. He’ll just have to do his best.

Viktor would tell him, _don’t let them see how you feel._

He comes back into the living room. Isabella is calling again; he turns the computer so that only the white sheet tacked over the wall is visible, and JJ is just out of sight. Then he sits down, makes himself look relaxed, and answers.

“Hello, Yuuri.” Isabella is wearing a red blouse, her hair pin straight, her mouth curved up into a satisfied smile. She’s sitting in a leather armchair that looks like a throne. “I want to talk to you about love.”

“Love?”

Isabella gestures, and the camera zooms out to reveal Viktor lying on a white cot on the floor at her feet. He’s dressed in a hospital gown; his hair is mussed. There’s a thin layer of sweat on his face, a sign of dishevelment Viktor would never allow if he were himself. His eyes are closed, but his clenched fists and curled toes betray him: he is not sleeping.

He is also not wearing a power limiter.

“I was a little worried about kidnapping the great, scary Viktor Nikiforov,” she muses. “But it wasn’t very hard at all, really. A loud psychic distraction, take off the limiter, give him a dose of power enhancement drugs, and he’s as well behaved as a lamb. Aren’t you, Viktor?”

Viktor moans softly.

Yuuri digs his nails into his palms under the table. Cutting her throat is too quick. He’s going to take her whole fucking head and give it to Viktor as an apology.

“Ready to talk terms?” She crosses her legs. “The faster you pay up, the sooner I get to give him back. Or you can refuse, and I’ll keep him. He really is a dear.” She kicks Viktor with the pointed toe of her shoe, and Viktor rolls over, cries out pitifully.

Yuuri can’t help but growl.

“Don’t you dare,” he says, and regrets it. His temper will only get Viktor killed.

“I absolutely dare, Yuuri, so keep your mouth shut unless you want your precious Viktor to pay the price. I want fifty million dollars by tomorrow. I want the files Viktor stole—don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about—and I want them in triplicate, with both paper and electronic copies. And I want you to deliver them personally, alone and unarmed to a place of my choosing. Then maybe I’ll give him back.”

“Maybe?”

“Maybe.” Isabella kicks Viktor again. “Any questions?”

“Just one.” Yuuri turns the computer so that JJ is just visible behind him. He makes a good victim, with the blood on his face still drying and his eyes wet with tears. “Wanna talk about love?”

There is a perfect moment of silence. 

Isabella’s expression slips, just for a moment, and Yuuri allows himself the moment of satisfaction of having rattled her. She’ll make mistakes if she’s nervous.

He needs her to make mistakes.

“I thought it was sloppy, having your boyfriend’s family hire me,” Yuuri says. “But you didn’t know, did you? It was JJ’s idea. He was trying to help you out.” He glances back at JJ, who is trying and failed to talk through his gag. “Kind of stupid, but if that’s your type…”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I met him, you know. At the afterparty in Beijing.” Yuuri mock-frowns. “You probably don’t recognize me now—I was the entertainment that night.”

That night Yuuri wore very little and ground on the pole like a whore, wound up after doing recon for two weeks a and coming out ten million dollars richer. He’d danced for Viktor, lashes heavy with glitter, and then Viktor took him home, wiped off the makeup with a tender hand, and held him down in bed until he cried.

They lay together afterward, holding hands.

 _Let’s go to Barcelona,_ Viktor said.

_Why?_

_Why not? It’s beautiful this time of year._

_Okay,_ Yuuri said, and off they went.

“…the pole dancer? That was you?” Isabella’s eyes flick down to Viktor incredulously. Yuuri knows what she’s thinking: _he let you do that?_

“He told me a lot about you. I guess he figured he didn’t need to keep his mouth shut in front of me.”

“Let him go.”

“You let Viktor go first. Otherwise I might get upset.”

“I’ll kill Viktor.”

Yuuri flinches, he can’t help himself, but he bares his teeth in a snarl.

“Anything you do to him I’ll do to JJ ten times over.”

“Can you?” Isabella watches him for any sign of weakness.

Yuuri only smiles. For Viktor? Gladly. “Give Viktor back and you won’t have to find out.”

“What makes you think I’ll agree, Yuuri. I like JJ, but maybe I don’t like him that much. Whereas you and Viktor are just devoted to each other, aren’t you?”

There’s a throwing knife in the pocket of his dress shirt. Yuuri produces it with a flourish and tosses it over his shoulder without looking.

JJ’s strangled cry of pain make Isabella wince. There’s a nice spray of blood on the white sheet behind him as the knife lodges itself through the shell of his left ear.

“If you don’t want him, he’s useless.” Yuuri takes out the second knife from his sleeve. “Wanna watch me get rid of him?”

“Even exchange. You bring JJ and I’ll bring Viktor, everyone leaves happy. You come unarmed.”

“You come unarmed. And you come yourself, no sending a lackey.”

“Fine. I need three days.”

“You get him here tomorrow or else I’m gonna do more than cut up his ear.”

“Are you sure you want to do this, Yuuri?” There’s something odd in Isabella’s tone. She leans forward, eyes narrowed. “You sure you want to save him? Even after what he’s done?”

Yuuri doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

But then, there’s a lot he doesn’t know about Viktor’s past.

“I’m sure. Three am tomorrow, behind the T&T supermarket.”

“Fine,” Isabella says tightly. “But I want to hear from JJ first.”

Yuuri’s first instinct is to refuse, since he can’t ask for the same from Viktor, but he checks himself. He would ask, if he were in Isabella’s position, and if he gives her this she’ll only be more desperate to get JJ back. He carries the laptop over to JJ, zooming in on his face, and tugs down the spit-soaked gag.

“Izzy,” JJ says. “Izzy, you gotta leave me behind.”

“Shut up, JJ, you fucking idiot. Just shut up. I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t antagonize Yuuri.”

“Izzy, wa—” Yuuri crams the gag back into his mouth, narrowly avoiding being bitten.

“See you soon,” he says, and then he hangs up and slams the laptop closed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are what keep me from throwing my laptop into the ocean


	4. tried so hard, got so far

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I can’t find any criminal activity linked to him because he wasn’t committing crimes. Maybe he was in school or something. He doesn’t look that old.”
> 
> “What, you think Viktor scooped him up off the playground?”
> 
> They’re not so far from the truth. Eighteen year old Yuuri Katsuki was a non-entity, the lowest rung on the ladder, a bit player among bit players. He knew nothing, then, about the world, and when he vanished, he left no trace. No imprint. No mark.
> 
>  
> 
> _It’s easy to make someone disappear._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: brief violence
> 
> viktor finally makes his (re)appearance! sort of.

All of the streetlamps in the parking lot have been shot out.

Chris eyes the shards of glass strewn across the asphalt with distaste. “Messy,” he says, nose wrinkled. “Where do you want me?”

“Park down the street.” Yuuri pushes back his bangs. He wishes he had a bobby pin, but Viktor is the one who carries them, tucked neatly into his sleeves. Beside him, JJ whimpers, and Yuuri clamps a hand over his mouth. “Phichit, stay in the trunk.”

Phichit makes a face—the trunk of a Toyota Corolla isn’t exactly roomy—but he nods. He holds up his tablet. “I’ll try and keep us clear,” he says. “And I’ll make sure it looks like Chris paid for parking.”

“Mm.” Yuuri is cold. It’s still dark out, and the only light is the dim bulb from the car’s interior light. They have an hour before Isabella is supposed to meet them, and Yuuri is counting on the fact that she has to move Viktor with short notice to slow him down. “Get into position.”

“Where are you setting up?” Chris asks.

Yuuri points to the center of the lot. There are no cars parked, and an earlier squall has left the ground wet. “There.”

“Are you sure? There’s no cover.”

“It’ll put her off guard.”

“Alright.” Chris salutes. “We’ll go. Don’t get killed, please, I really don’t want to have to explain that to Viktor.”

Yuuri doesn’t respond; he just gets out of the car and starts walking. He snags a shopping cart as he goes and overturns it to sit on; if he needs a weapon, it will suffice. He puts JJ under the upside down cart to keep him from escaping. He controls his breathing, lets himself sink down into his own head. Then he listens.

It takes longer than he would like; Yuuri is used to dialing his hearing down in firefights and car chases, not up, since Viktor’s powers are much more suited to eavesdropping. Slowly, he begins to hear the sounds of the city magnified, the growl of engines far away, the whisper of the wind, JJ’s racing heart. He blocks out as much of it as he can, looking for something concrete he can focus on until Isabella and Viktor arrive.

Chris and Phichit are talking through a hole cut into the trunk in the inside of the car.

“How well do you know Yuuri?”

Plastic squeaks as Phichit drinks, or maybe just fidgets with the bottle. He’s too young, Yuuri think, he hasn’t learned to put on a mask yet. “We’ve been friends for like three years.”

“I thought so. Has he ever told you anything about his past?”

“He’s from Japan.” Fabric rustles. “I mean, I don’t know his real name or anything, but I was able to check birth records in Japan and make a list of probables. His mother used to make really good pork cutlet bowls, he has at least one sibling—and they used to pick on him so I bet they were older. Oh, and he used to have a dog. A small dog.”

Phichit remembers more than Yuuri expected him to. They have been friends for a long time; Yuuri doesn’t meet a lot of people he likes at work, and he’s playing a role half the time, anyway, and can’t really get to know them. It’s...not threatening, exactly, knowing Phichit is filing away every crumb of Yuuri’s past he finds. It’s a warmer feeling. It takes Yuuri a moment to understand that the idea makes him _happy._

“I thought information gathering was one of your specialties.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Look, without knowing Yuuri’s real age or what region of Japan he’s from, it’s hard to narrow down the list much. I can track him electronically pretty well back about five years, based on the aliases I know he uses plus whatever I’ve got on Viktor—”

“—assuming any of it is accurate—”

Yuuri snorts. It’s true that Viktor’s powers don’t work on computers, but it’s also true that computers are operated by people, and also true that Viktor is tortuously paranoid about being tracked online. Sometimes _literally_ tortuous.  
  
“—ahem.” Phichit coughs pointedly. “Any further than five years, and there’s almost nothing. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, he was way under the radar.”

“Some of government agent, maybe? Black ops? Was he in a cult?”

Phichit snorts. “Dramatic much?”

“You don’t know Viktor. He wouldn’t have picked Yuuri if Yuuri didn’t have...hidden depths.”

“I’m not saying Yuuri is shallow. But do you seriously think he’s some kind of superspy? If he was, he’d take better jobs.”

“Fine, then. What’s your explanation?”

“He wasn’t doing anything.” Liquid sloshes.

“What?” Something crinkles; a bag of chips, or a plastic bag.

“I can’t find any criminal activity linked to him because he wasn’t committing crimes. Maybe he was in school or something. He doesn’t look that old.”

“What, you think Viktor scooped him up off the playground?”

They’re not so far from the truth. Eighteen year old Yuuri Katsuki was a non-entity, the lowest rung on the ladder, a bit player among bit players. He knew nothing, then, about the world, and when he vanished, he left no trace. No imprint. No mark.

It’s easy to make someone disappear.

Something about that thought niggles at Yuuri’s mind, but at that moment he hears Isabella’s voice. She is giving orders. She is being dropped off a block away out of a van; Yuuri hears her shoes touch the ground.

And beside her is the sound of Viktor’s ragged breathing.

He projects out, as loudly as he dares. No words, just the feeling of being in love with Viktor, of missing him, of longing to have him back. He lets his desperation take over for a moment, and he hears Viktor inhale sharply.

 _Come on,_ he thinks. _Focus on me. I have you._

“Let go of me,” Isabella says, and the last word comes out strangled. Almost as if her mouth suddenly has stopped working. She staggers, her footfalls offbeat, and Viktor’s breathing evens out.

“Yuuri,” he says.

Yuuri’s heart does something foolish in his chest. _Viktor._

They start to move towards the parking lot, and Yuuri shifts positions, adjusts the cart in case he has to move it quickly, strains his eyes trying to see Viktor and Isabella as they appear. They are small figures on the far side of the lot, and then they get closer. Every detail of Viktor’s appearance is a fresh heartbreak: the blood on his hospital gown, the way he sways as he walks, the bandages on his arms. Isabella is walking stiffly beside him as he uses her for support.

Her expression is tight.

Yuuri slowly dials his hearing down to normal human levels. Viktor’s control over her will be tenuous. Isabella will certainly have prepared for this possibility. He has to be ready.

“Stop,” Isabella says through gritted teeth, and she digs in her heels. They’re only ten feet away; Yuuri wants to sprint to Viktor, won’t believe he’s safe until he’s laid hands on him. But not yet. “JJ first.”

“He takes a step, Viktor takes a step.”

Isabella nods. “Fine.”

Yuuri lifts up the shopping cart, and pulls JJ up by the back of his shirt. JJ staggers as his stiff legs refuse to support his weight, and Yuuri hisses in impatience as he waits for JJ to get his bearings. After a few long seconds of jelly-legged stumbling, JJ is finally standing upright, and Yuuri shoves him forward.

“Walk,” he says. “Slowly. You run, I’ll kill you.”

JJ nods, eyes fixed on Isabella, and takes one step forward.

Across from him, at Isabella’s side, Viktor does the same.

She stands straight and proud, and her face doesn’t give away anything anymore—not concern for JJ, not anger, not fear. She watches the exchange with perfect calm. Yuuri longs for whatever source of composure she has found; he feels like a cannon is firing in his chest in place of his heart, every beat louder with every step Viktor takes toward him. He has to fight the urge to raise his arms; as soon as Viktor is within reach, dignity be damned, he’s going to grab him and run.

It doesn’t matter where Isabella goes; at full strength, Viktor will be able to find her.

Viktor is eight feet away. Six feet. Five. He and JJ pass each other, and Yuuri readies himself; if there’s going to be an attack, it will be now. Four feet. Three.

One more step, and he’ll have Viktor back.

A bullet leaves a crater in the asphalt at Viktor’s feet. He makes a fatal mistake. He stops.

“No!”

Yuuri knocks him down. _Cover him,_ he thinks, _I have to shield his vitals, where the fuck is the sniper?_

Another bullet. Another miss. Yuuri’s been lucky twice, he’s not going to be lucky again. He keeps his body between Viktor’s head and the direction of the shooting. He grabs the handle of the shopping cart and dials up his hearing again, this time looking for the telltale sound of a bullet.

He’s had plenty of practice doing _this._ Viktor always leaves their exit strategy to Yuuri.

“Kill him!” Isabella is yelling. Yuuri doesn’t dare look back—he breaks off a piece of the cart to deflect bullets—he seizes Viktor by the elbow and runs.

Sniper fire follows them all the way to the car, hundreds of impassable feet away. Yuuri blocks as many of them as he can, dragging Viktor along with all his strength, but even as he’s shoving Viktor into the car and snarling at Chris to gun it, he knows.

“Jesus, that went wrong,” Phichit gasps. The car screeches against the asphalt as Chris accelerates. “Chris, make a right up here, I’m gonna fuck with the traffic cams.”

The car swings right; Viktor topples over into Yuuri’s lap. Yuuri holds him there.

“It was too easy.”

“Too _easy?”_

“Yes.” Yuuri picks up Viktor’s hand where it grips his knee; Viktor is breathing heavily, eyes shut, face unnaturally pale. He squeezes Viktor’s fingers, and feels a rough touch against his mind in return. The bandages on Viktor’s arms are exactly where they’d be if he had an IV in and they were giving him drugs.

Or taking blood.

What are the odds that the sniper would miss more than once?

_It’s easy to make someone disappear._

“Why’d they give him back?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are the power strip into which i plug my fic outlets


	5. not everyone sees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viktor manages eye contact once, blearily. “It’s you,” he says.
> 
> “It’s me,” Yuuri agrees. He holds Viktor’s hand as Viktor stares into his eyes for a long moment. Then Viktor’s eyes fall closed again.
> 
> Yuuri spends too many seconds sitting there, agonizing, Viktor’s pale wrist pressed against his mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit of a transitional chapter. Enjoy the quiet while you can, Yuuri...

Viktor is no help as Yuuri drags him out of the car and into the house. He clings heavily to Yuuri’s shoulder, his long, bony fingers dug weakly into Yuuri’s shirt. Yuuri gives up trying to help him walk after a few aborted attempts, and hooks an arm under his knees; he ignores Phichit’s lifted brows as he carries Viktor bridal-style through the front door and into their bedroom.

The first thing Yuuri does is strap a power limiter—the XR model used in prisons, not the standard one sold to the public—around Viktor’s bicep. He dials it up to nine.

The second thing he does is coax Viktor into taking an Ambien.

The hospital gown comes off—ripped down the front, Yuuri has no desire to preserve it—and then Viktor is deposited in the tub. He’s about the same color as the ceramic.

Viktor manages eye contact once, blearily. “It’s you,” he says.

“It’s me,” Yuuri agrees. He holds Viktor’s hand as Viktor stares into his eyes for a long moment. Then Viktor’s eyes fall closed again.

Yuuri spends too many seconds sitting there, agonizing, Viktor’s pale wrist pressed against his mouth.

Underneath the dressings none of the puncture wounds are bleeding, or look infected. Yuuri disinfects each of them just to be sure--Viktor flinches, once, and Yuuri grinds his jaw so hard it aches--before setting aside the pile of clean bandages. He doesn’t want to get the dressings wet.

He wipes down Viktor’s body with a soft cloth and then turns to his hair. Yuuri debates whether to actually complete Viktor’s preferred haircare routine, and then does, because he’s sure if Viktor was awake and able he would. He tips Viktor’s head to the side, combing conditioner through his wet bangs, and sees it.

There’s a tiny plastic bead embedded in the uppermost curve of Viktor’s ear, the exact color of his skin, so small that Yuuri has to sharpen his eyesight to get a good look at it. He prods it; it doesn’t move.

“Sorry,” Yuuri says, and then he leans back and gropes around in the first aid kit. He produces a scalpel, iodine, and a lighter. As he’s sterilizing the knife, he dials up his hearing and leans his head in close. The bead isn’t making any noise.

 _A tracking device?_ Yuuri thinks. _But why track Viktor at all? If they had him hostage, they could have done anything with him._

Maybe they want to follow Viktor—but it would be the easiest thing in the world for Viktor to use someone else if he didn’t want to be tracked. And there’s no way Viktor would miss the presence of this implant for long.

There’s something here Yuuri is missing. He’ll have to ask Viktor about it, later.

Yuuri sprays Viktor’s ear with ethyl chloride. He takes a deep breath, grits his teeth, and slices.

 _There’s going to be a hole in his ear,_ Yuuri thinks as he puts pressure on the wound. He drops the bead into an empty pill bottle in the first aid kit for safekeeping. _Will he be mad? It should heal._

The conditioner has set for long enough. Yuuri rinses it out.

Eventually Viktor is clean and Yuuri has determined him free of any serious injuries. He’s checked Viktor’s scalp for any sign of brain biopsy. He’s checked the rest of his body again for any other implants. He’s bandaged every one of Viktor’s IV marks and the hole in his ear.

Yuuri dresses him in an oversized sweatshirt and pajama pants, and then bundles him under the covers. Viktor is both taller and broader than he is; asleep, brow furrowed with pain, he looks impossibly small.

“I’ll be back,” he says, even though at this point the Ambien has kicked in and there’s no way Viktor is listening. “I mean, I’m not going anywhere. Just into the living room.” He kisses the top of Viktor’s head.

Then he forces himself to actually leave. What Yuuri wants is to lie down beside Viktor, and put his face between Viktor’s shoulders, and not think about anything. That’s not productive.

Chris and Phichit are sitting on the couch together, talking about the Yang’s money laundering. This is perfectly reasonable, which is why Yuuri suspects them of talking about Viktor behind his back.

(The couch is a hideous lemon yellow affair that Yuuri fell in love with at a Costco. Viktor chose a fashionable striped piece from some obscure designer label; Yuuri vetoed it on the ground that it was as hard as concrete and had spindly little wooden legs.

“It matches,” Viktor said.

“Who care if it matches, we’re not buying any furniture we might break by fucking on it.” Yuuri sighed, legs thrown over the arm of their recliner—blue, velvet, too uncomfortable to sit in normally. “Besides, it doesn’t matter if the furniture matches. The only other person who lives here is me.”

“Don’t you want to live in a nice house, Yuuri?”

“I just want to live with you.”

They bought the couch Yuuri liked instead.)

“Is he okay?” Phichit asks.

“We’ll see when the drugs wear off.”

“Did he tell you anything?” Chris asks.

How much can he tell Phichit and Chris? Phichit is Yuuri’s friend; Chris is Viktor’s friend. They’ve helped him this much, and they’re in deep now. But there are things that only Yuuri knows about Viktor—weaknesses, habits, quirks—that he’s loathe to reveal to anyone else.

“He can’t,” Yuuri says, finally. “He’s not strong enough yet.”

“Yang might have tracked us here already.” Chris taps his fingers on the table.

“It doesn’t make sense for her to hit us now,” Phichit protests. “I mean, she had Viktor. She had Yuuri by the balls—no offense.”

Yuuri shrugs.

“So we don’t know what she wanted. We don’t know how she grabbed Viktor, who is usually impossible to surprise. And we don’t know what her next move will be.” Chris sighs. “You know, Yuuri, I think I liked you better when I thought you were just Viktor’s boytoy.”

“Quit whining,” Phichit says cheerfully. “Anyone got any ideas? I’m looking for anything on Yang I can get, but it’s gonna take a while. Her computer security is a lot better than I thought it would be.”

Yuuri puts the pill bottle on the table. “This was in his ear.” He tips the implant out onto the tabletop. “Do you know what it is?”

Phichit leans forward, dark brows drawn together. “It’s not sending out a signal,” he says. “No idea.”

“So can they use it to track us?”

“Maybe we can use it to track them.” Phichit grins and picks up the bottle. “You want me to take a crack at it?”

“Go ahead.”

Phichit pockets it.

“When is Viktor going to be awake?” Chris asks.

“I don’t know,” Yuuri says. He can make an educated guess—assuming the power enhancers don’t interact with the Ambien, maybe six hours before the pain is so excruciating Viktor can’t sleep—but he doesn’t know. He’s never seen Viktor on power enhancers before. The only medications Viktor takes are antibiotics and sleeping pills, and even those reluctantly.

“Can we wake him up?”

“No. Why do you want to wake him up?”

“Because he’s the only person with any answers,” Chris says tartly.

“We have to wait.”

“Maybe I don’t want to wait.”

“Guys,” Phichit says. “This isn’t helping.”

“I realize Viktor is the only thing Yuuri cares about,” Chris says, “but I don’t want to die, and Viktor is the one who knows what’s going on. Sorry, Yuuri.”

He gets up.

Yuuri gets up, too, and gages the distance between them. Everything in the living room is flammable, but that won’t matter if Chris’s neck is broken. Chris is stuck moving at human speed. He can’t incinerate Yuuri faster than Yuuri can kill him. Probably.

And that’ll leave Phichit in a bad situation. If Phichit takes Chris’s side—

Phichi’s powers aren’t exactly combat-ready, but does Yuuri really want to—

“Okay!” Phichit is suddenly between them, arms raised. “This is a stupid idea. Both of you sit down.”

“It’s your life he’s gambling too, Phichit,” Chris says.

“Yeah, well, I trust Yuuri with my life, okay? Besides, if you were in imminent danger, Viktor would be too. Yuuri wouldn’t pick Viktor’s beauty sleep over his life.”

“It’s not beauty sleep,” Yuuri says, wounded. “He has to rest.”

“Why?”

“Because when he wakes up he’s going to be in agonizing pain,” Yuuri snaps. He swallows down all the things he wants to say.

Viktor probably won’t sleep for days after he wakes up. He won’t be able to talk. The three million minds in Toronto will wear on him. If Yuuri is exceptionally persuasive, he might take a sedative to take the edge off, but he won’t take any pain medications.

“Can’t you give him something for the pain?”

Yuuri shrugs.

(He has some ideas about this, but Viktor has always made it clear he doesn’t want to talk about it, so Yuuri has never asked.)

“So Viktor has gotten us into this mess, but he can’t get us out of it?”

“He didn't.”

“You heard what Yang said—”

“He didn’t,” Yuuri says flatly.

They face off again. Chris looks unimpressed and tense; Yuuri has nothing more to say to him about it. Whatever Isabella Yang thinks Viktor did, it doesn’t matter. If Viktor had any idea he was in danger, or going to be kidnapped, he would have told Yuuri. If whatever is going on is important, Viktor will let him know.

“How long do we have to stay here, then?”

“You can leave right now,” Yuuri says.

“I’m not leaving until I’m convinced I’m not going to be shot in the head by a sniper as soon as I show my face.”

“This isn’t electronic,” Phichit says.

Yuuri turns, confused. Phichit has the implant in hand; he’s picking at it with the tip of a small knife. The outer layer of the implant is the color of Viktor’s skin, but Phichit has peeled off a bit to reveal a pinpoint of bright red.

Yuuri enhances his vision again to get a better look. “What is it?”

“Don’t know. But there’s no circuitry, nothing computerized.” Phichit squints. “I need a smaller knife.”

“I’ll get one.”

Viktor’s workshop is underground, through a trap door in the hallway. Yuuri lifts the panel and hops down without touching the ladder. He ignores the gleaming steel workbenches and the welding equipment, and goes straight for the racks of toolboxes on the wall. They’re labeled, but half the labels are in languages only Viktor speaks, and Viktor’s labeling system is idiosyncratic at best. Yuuri has to open up three of them before he finds a set of tiny scalpels.

He’s halfway up the ladder when he’s suddenly ravenously hungry.

Supplies in the kitchen are scarce, but Yuuri finds a loaf of bread in the freezer and a jar of jam in the fridge. He toasts four slices in the toaster oven, and starts boiling water for tea. There’s three tea bags left in a jar on the counter; Yuuri puts all three in the cup before he pours. He lets the tea steep while he spreads jam on the toast.

He spoons two teaspoons of the jam into the hot tea before throwing out the bags and putting all the food on the tray.

“Uh, Yuuri?” Phichit asks as Yuuri steps out of the kitchen. He’s still toying with the implant and the knife. “What are you doing?”

“What?”

“Weren’t you getting a knife?”

Yuuri looks down in confusion at the tray in his hands, steam curling up out of the mug, and blinks.

_Oh. Viktor._

“He’s awake,” Yuuri says. Viktor must be exhausted if he’s projecting this hard. And he must be starving to already be awake. Yuuri hates boysenberry jam and doesn’t drink tea. “Hang on.”

He takes the tray into the bedroom, ignoring Chris’s alarmed, “Is he being mind controlled?” behind him.

VIktor is curled up under the covers, a pillow held over his head. His knuckles are white. This close to him, Yuuri’s stomach aches with hunger; Yang must not have fed him.

Yuuri doesn’t speak, as not to aggravate Viktor’s overstimulated senses, and instead sets the tray slowly down on the nightstand. The smell of tea and toast fills the air. The soundproofing in the bedroom keeps out the sound of Phichit and Chris talking, and the road noise, but it can’t protect Viktor from the minds of the people around him.

He waits.

After a few moments, he realizes he needs something that’s hidden in the wall, and starts tearing into the drywall. There’s a steel lock box attached to one of the pipes; Yuuri doesn’t bother unlocking it. He rips it free and pries it open with his bare hands.

Inside, nestled in cotton, is a power limiter. Yuuri picks it up and turns it over; there’s no logo from RC, the corporation that exclusively manufactures them. The design is different, too; instead of plain black, it’s rose gold, and the dial has an analog clock built in. Disguised power limiters are illegal.

So Viktor must have either found someone to make this, or made it himself.

(No one’s ever made a power limiter. Black market ones are hideously expensive precisely because the supply is limited to what can be easily stolen. Yuuri didn’t even know this one existed.)

Yuuri takes off the limiter Viktor has on already and replaces it with the rose gold one. Immediately, the pain in his stomach ceases and Viktor’s grip on the pillow loosens.

“Viktor?”

“Yuuri.”

He jumps—he’s not expecting Viktor to be able to speak yet.

_Are you okay?_

_You rescued me._ Viktor lowers the pillow. Underneath, he looks almost normal. Only the dark circles beneath his eyes give him away. _No one’s ever tried to rescue me before._

Yuuri sits down on the edge of the bed, and Viktor crawls into his lap, head pillowed on his thighs. His hair falls into his eyes; they fall shut when Yuuri drags his nails lightly over his scalp. He hums with pleasure.

“Are you sure you’re all right…?” Yuuri hesitates. Viktor hates to be pressed. “Viktor, I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“I know.”

“None of this makes any sense.”

“I know.” Viktor noses at Yuuri’s knee. “Can you hold off Chris and Phichit for a while? I need to rest.”

Yuuri desperately wants to ask Viktor a thousand more questions. But if Viktor thought there was immediate danger, he would say so. If he needs rest, Yuuri will make sure he gets it.

“Sure.” He smooths Viktor’s hair down. “Get some sleep. Does your ear hurt?”

“No, you did a good job.” Viktor yawns. “Can you bring me that implant? I need it.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I want to look.”

“Okay.”

Yuuri will go get the implant from Phichit in a second, and let Viktor examine it. He’ll tuck Viktor back under the covers and make sure he rests in complete silence. He’ll check and recheck the house’s security measures, and prep their luggage for when they inevitably have to flee Canada. He’ll go back to Phichit and Chris, and put together a plan for dealing with Yang and her crew.

But for now, he cards his fingers through Viktor’s hair, follows Viktor’s spine from the back of his neck down to the dip in his back. Viktor is warm, and his contentment spills over and warms Yuuri’s chest. Viktor’s always looser with his projection when he’s tired, or maybe he’s comfortable enough with Yuuri that he doesn’t bother to check himself.

Viktor is safe, and with him. Yuuri closes his eyes, just for a moment. Everything will be fine now that they’re together. He’s sure of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments. comments alone can convince me to focus and update my WIPs instead of, you know, not doing that.


	6. anyone would drown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri’s dream of being a musical sensation died when he was fifteen. The violent reality of life with the Foxes intruded. He stopped practicing piano everyday, and half his dance lessons became fighting ones. He started running in the mornings, just to feel like he was doing something with his life.
> 
> Viktor’s never asked where Yuuri learned to play, or why. If he’s read the truth in Yuuri’s brain, he’s never said anything about it. But their safehouse in Toronto has an upright piano.
> 
> He can’t sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to james, who read this and was like "WE NEED TO GO MEANER." if this upsets you, it is ENTIRELY his fault.
> 
> the content warnings are spoilery, so i've put them in the end notes and chosen not to add them as tags.

When Yuuri was a kid, he wanted to be a pop star.

His parents never tried too hard to disillusion him about the plausibility of this dream. Even then, Yuuri kept his ambitions close to his chest; he’d learned already that his anxiety made him weak, and in his family weakness was a luxury he could not afford.

Dance lessons were easy; Minako taught him, and no one had to know Yuuri wasn’t getting extra combat training. There was no way to manage singing lessons in their small town without raising attention. They couldn’t bring in a music teacher, either. But they could get a hold of a keyboard, and his dad bought Yuuri a set of videos designed for people who wanted to learn to play, and his sister, in a show of silent solidarity, brought him sheet music and how to books and never complained if Yuuri played late at night to calm himself.

Yuuri’s dream of being a musical sensation died when he was fifteen. The violent reality of life with the Foxes intruded. He stopped practicing piano everyday, and half his dance lessons became fighting ones. He started running in the mornings, just to feel like he was doing something with his life.

Viktor’s never asked where Yuuri learned to play, or why. If he’s read the truth in Yuuri’s brain, he’s never said anything about it. But their safehouse in Toronto has an upright piano.

He can’t sleep.

Yuuri tucks the covers over Viktor, who’s draped on top of him, and listens until he catches the sound of Phichit and Chris breathing. They’re both asleep, with slow, even breaths. Not surprising; the three of them argued long into the evening about their next move.

He slips from the bed, and makes his way into one of the rooms at the back of the house.

The piano is lit by moonlight coming through the skylight. Yuuri wonders idly if the glass up there is bulletproof—if it isn’t, it probably _should_ be—and sits down at the bench. He cracks his knuckles before putting his fingers on the keys.

Yuuri doesn’t play much anymore, and he only has one piece memorized: Viktor’s favorite. He’s compensated for his own lack of talent by cheating, and he draws on that now as he starts to play. The song meanders, the notes tripping over each other, building and building in repetition before they fall. Up and down, right over left, Yuuri plays without one missed note. He plays it again. He plays it again. His hands know the music, and his tired mind shuts off.

He jumps as something warm and heavy rests on his thigh. Viktor is there—having stolen in, silent as a cat—his head lying in Yuuri’s lap as he sprawls across the bench. His legs dangle off the end. Yuuri regrets needing both hands to play, as Viktor’s moonlit hair begs to be touched. He keeps going. The end of the piece melts into the beginning.

Viktor’s eyes are closed. His cheek rests against Yuuri’s bare leg. There’s bruising on the back of his hand where an IV must have been inserted badly. His breath fans out against Yuuri’s skin in time to the steady pulse of Yuuri’s heart.

“I used to play the violin,” he whispers. “Did you know that?”

“No,” Yuuri says, hushed. Here in the dark, this innocuous comment feels like the deepest of confessions. “Did you like it?”

“No, I hated it.”

“Oh.”

“But I miss it now.” Viktor sighs. “My Yuuri. Play it one more time.”

Yuuri does, fingers flying, until he plays the last note; he holds it, lets it linger in the air.

“You doing all right?”

“Mm.”

“We need to get out of the country.”

“Whatever you think is best.”

“We haven’t been to Germany in a while.”

“Mm.”

Yuuri wishes Viktor would express an opinion. It’s not like him to be so passive. He lets Yuuri have his way a lot of the time, it’s true, but this is a life or death situation. Yuuri could use the help.

He squashes down the irritation. _Viktor was kidnapped,_ he reminds himself. _He’s probably still fucked up from drugs and traumatized._ Yuuri’s thousands of questions can wait.

“Come on. Get some sleep.”

Viktor blinks at him, but he sits up and lets Yuuri usher him back into their bedroom, Yuuri’s hand under his elbow to brace him. The rose gold power limiter is still on his wrist; Yuuri notices that it’s been turned down a couple of levels. Yuuri stares at it as they get back into bed, as Viktor opens his arms and lets Yuuri crawl into them.

“Viktor?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you have any luck with that implant?”

Viktor says nothing for several seconds. Yuuri thinks he’s dozed off.

“…no.”

A lie. Yuuri wonders why.

“Okay.”

Yuuri puts his head under Viktor’s chin and tries to sleep. In the early hours of the morning, he finally does; it comes over him dreamless and deep. Yuuri sleeps better than he’s slept in two months.

He sleeps so well that when he finally stirs, he almost rolls over and goes back to it. He’s so comfortable.

Viktor’s not there.

“Mmph,” Yuuri groans. Viktor is such a morning person. Never mind, he’ll talk to him later—

His eyes open again.

Viktor’s not there.

The clock on the bedside table reads ten am—impossibly late, well past the time Yuuri was supposed to be awake to start the process of smuggling them out of the continent. He shoves back the covers, rubbing frantically at his eyes, fumbles in the bedside table for a knife. Hilt in hand, he slips out of the bedroom silently and makes his way down the hall.

Chris and Phichit are still asleep, too. Something must be wrong. Has Viktor been taken again? Were they drugged? Gas pumped in, maybe, or something in the water. Yuuri unsheathes the blade as he hears footsteps in the front room.

He flattens himself against the wall, and looks into the mirror in the hall, the one that’s angled to show the front door so they can see it without putting themselves in the line of fire. Yuuri breathes a sigh of relief when he sees that it’s Viktor there in the foyer, lacing up his boots. There’s a light dusting of snow on the ground visible through the nearest window.

Viktor is wearing a suit, dark and crisp, and a silver tie. Yuuri watches the glint of his cuff links; Viktor is fussy about his appearance, but even he doesn’t just sit around in formalwear for no reason.

“Where are you going?”

“Yuuri.”

“Don’t go out by yourself, it’s not safe.” Yuuri swallows. He takes a step towards Viktor, hand held out. Viktor doesn’t move. “Viktor, I think something’s wrong. I should have woken up earlier—”

“Yes, you broke through it faster than I expected.”

“W-what?”

“I suppose it doesn’t matter now.”

“You put me to sleep?”

“I did.”

Yuuri stares at him. Viktor’s expression is unnervingly blank. He’s good at concealing his feelings, but Yuuri has always prided himself at being good at reading him, underneath whatever mask he’s put on. He can’t tell what Viktor is thinking at all right now. He can’t think of anything that would explain Viktor interfering with Yuuri’s mind without permission.

“Why would you—where are you going?” he asks again. “I’ll come with you.”

“Why?”

“Won’t you need me?”

Viktor laughs. “Why would I need _you?”_

Yuuri opens his mouth. Closes it. He can’t think of anything to say to that. “But—”

“When have I _ever_ needed you?”

_“But—”_

“Yuuri, please be quiet.”

“Viktor—”

He drops to the ground as his knees give out. His arms go numb and heavy, his throat freezes, and Yuuri gasps soundlessly as he tries to speak. He can’t utter a word.

For a moment Yuuri panics, because he almost can’t breathe, and after he almost suffocated in Uzbekistan he’s been afraid of asphyxiation. He stares at Viktor, who is still lazily tying the knots in his laces, and tries to beg with his eyes, with his thoughts.

Viktor pulls the ends of the laces to tighten the knot. “You’re giving me a headache. You’d think after five years you’d have grown some balls instead of crying about every little thing.”

For a moment Yuuri thinks he’s misheard.

Those words. Those harsh, unfettered words. It’s impossible that Viktor would say them to him. It’s impossible that Viktor would mean them. It’s impossible that—

“—that I might have gotten tired of being a babysitter?” Viktor smiles. It’s the same private smile he uses when they’re alone; it seems horribly out of place now.

 _But I love you,_ Yuuri thinks, wildly. Reality has gone off kilter, somehow. This can’t be happening. Viktor isn’t like this.

“I almost died, you know. Life is very short.” Viktor shrugs and smooths his tie. “I don’t want to waste any more of mine on you.”

He reaches for the door.

Yuuri manages a noise, then, a broken, painful noise from a body that won’t respond to his commands. So this is what it is like. Yuuri asked Viktor once for a demonstration; Viktor refused.

“Shut up, Yuuri,” Viktor says, still smiling, and then he turns the knob and everything goes black.

His eyelids are suddenly heavy. Yuuri feels the artificial press of Viktor’s will on him and struggles against it. He has to stay awake. He has to open his eyes. He has to find out what Viktor is saying because he’s not making any sense. He has to—

“Yuuri?”

“Viktor!?”

“Sorry, just me,” Phichit says. He’s bent over Yuuri; Yuuri realizes he’s lying on the floor. Phichit’s hand is on his wrist, presumably taking his pulse. Yuuri pulls his hand away, in case he has to lie; his pulse might give him away. “What happened? Chris and I just woke up and found you passed out here.”

“What did Viktor do? “ Chris asks.

“He’s gone.”

“What do you mean, he’s gone? He was taken?”

“No.” Yuuri sits up. He’s shaking; he can’t seem to put together his thoughts in any kind of order. Viktor put him to sleep again. Viktor hasn’t used his powers against Yuuri since Yuuri tried to kill him five years ago. Viktor never does things like that. He loves Yuuri, he says, he doesn’t want to abuse him like that. “He—he left.”

“Shit. And he put us to sleep so we wouldn’t stop him.”

“He left.”

“We should get out of here. It’s Viktor’s safehouse, it might be compromised.”

“He _left_ me.”

_He never needed me at all._

Chris and Phichit look at each other, knowing looks, and Yuuri has to clench his fists to keep from screaming. He doesn’t need their pity. He can’t bear it. _Why would I need you?_ It’s not true. It can’t be true. It must be, or why would Viktor say it?

Why would Viktor hurt him, unless he no longer cared to baby Yuuri’s fragile heart?

“Yuuri, we have to go,” Phichit says, gently.

“No.”

“Leave him,” Chris mutters.

“Shut it, Chris. Yuuri, come on, we can’t stay here.”

“I can’t.”

“You’ll get killed.”

“I can’t,” Yuuri says, and his voice cracks. He has no idea what he looks like but it must be terrible, because Phichit withdraws his outstretched hand and Chris winces.

He can’t leave. If he leaves this will be real. If he leaves and Viktor comes back they won’t get to speak. If he leaves it’s all over.

If he leaves…

Yuuri doesn’t know how long he stays there, sitting on the floor. It’s a fancy tile, one Viktor picked out and that they installed together after the original flooring was damaged. He stares at the pattern of veins in the faux-marble ceramic and listens numbly to Phichit and Chris make preparations to leave. They’re going to Mexico to start with, and then by boat to South America, where they’ll switch to clean aliases and fly away.

It’s a good plan.

It’s a smart plan.

Viktor loved him—past tense.

Yuuri buries his face in his knees. He’s crying. He hates crying. He can’t stop.

The two of them come into the foyer with backpacks slung over their shoulders. Phichit looks distressed; Chris looks resigned. They’ve been arguing, Yuuri knows. Chris wants Phichit to come; Phichit feels like he should stay.

Chris is right. There’s no reason for Phichit to die just because Yuuri’s life is collapsing around him.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come?”

“If you hit the rental car desk at the airport and tell them you want the green Lincoln, they’ll give you our emergency car. It’s solar powered. There’s stuff in the trunk. It’ll get you out of the country faster.”

“Where did you get a solar-powered car?” Chris asks. Solar-powered vehicles haven’t been sold since the recalls ten years ago, after a series of tragic deaths due to spontaneous engine explosions. Yuuri remembers following the story with Viktor, who could talk for hours about how to fix the manufacturing defect that had plagued the cars. Eventually Yuuri stole him a couple of them from a junkyard and let him work on them.

“Just go.”

“Yuuri—someone’s coming.”

“What?” Chris tenses, hand going to the gun shoved in his waistband. Phichit is staring at the front door.

“They’re on foot. Cell phone,” he adds, “but it’s off, that’s why I didn’t notice before. They’re close.”

“Yuuri, who knows about this place besides you and Viktor?”

“No one.”

“Then it’s either Yang or someone Viktor sent.”

“Should we hide?”

“They have to know we’re here. Let’s fight and get out while we can.”

Yuuri listens to their argument without moving. He’s still got the knife, but he can’t imagine himself actually fighting, or moving, or doing anything, ever again. Maybe Viktor did send someone, but no; it’s not like him. Or maybe it is and Yuuri has never known him at all.

There’s a knock at the door. Through the window, Yuuri can see a jacket, a scarf, a hood—their face is covered, their eyes blocked by mirrored sunglasses—all brown and practical and a little worn. The hair plastered to the forehead is blond and badly bleached.

Chris trains his weapon on the door. Phichit gets back against the wall—he’s not much of a fighter—and grips the tiny pistol he carries in his laptop bag.

The front door rattles and then swings open.

“So it’s true,” she says, in Japanese, in a voice Yuuri hasn’t heard in five years. “You _asshole._ You’re alive.”

Yuuri opens his mouth to say something, but it’s too late; Mari rips off her sunglasses and attacks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: viktor breaks up with yuuri pretty brutally plus he uses his telepathy pretty indiscriminately here. 
> 
> tell me how you really feel, guys. comment.


	7. so i tell myself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Yuuri was seven, Mari taught him how to throw a punch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the wait! as you can see, i got a lot going on, ficwise :).

When Yuuri was seven, Mari taught him how to throw a punch.

Her first blow snaps his head back, knocks him onto his elbows, makes him drop the knife. Her second blow goes for the gut, though, and instinct kicks in. Yuuri grabs her by the forearms and throws her over his head. She hits the wall with a dull thud. Plaster dust floats in the air like a cloud. There’s a bright smear of blood against the cream-colored paint; a matching drip of blood down Yuuri’s face.

“Nee-chan?”

“Don’t,” Mari sits up, eyes afire, “don’t pull that ‘nee-chan’ shit with me!”

She lunges for his throat, and only Yuuri’s enhanced speed gets him out of the way this time.

 _Mari’s gotten better,_ he thinks as he dodges. He shoves her back; she tries to break his shin with her boot. Less reliant on her powers. Stronger. She gets a handful of his hair. Her grip is like iron and Yuuri hears the bones in her wrist creak as he pries her off. His glasses go flying.

Or maybe this is just the first time they’ve fought without Mari pulling her punches.

Yuuri has to waste precious seconds shapeshifting his eyes so that he can see clearly, and so he gets a 20/20 view of Mari’s fist coming right between his eyes. He drops; she falls heavily on top of him, and then they’re grappling, Mari’s nails raking at his skin as she tries to get her hands around his neck.

He could up his strength a little bit and crush her like a toothpick.

He doesn’t.

“Well?” She pins him down. Yuuri stares blankly at her; he’s shocked by how little she’s aged in five years. She’s got the same insolent tilt to her brows. “Have anything to say?”

“You fried your hair,” he says, dazed. “Have you tried toner?”

“What?”

“It’s all dry.” _Viktor would—_ Yuuri cuts off the thought before he can have it.

“That’s what you have to say? You ran off for five goddamn years and you’re complaining about my hair?”

“Sorry.”

Mari’s hold loosens. She stares at him. “Excuse me?”

“Sorry,” Yuuri repeats, and then he tosses her across the room and through the open front door. She lands in the snow on the front path, of which is already too much of. The storm has picked up, while they were fighting, and a thin layer of snow has blown into the foyer.

“Uh,” Phichit says. “Are you guys done fighting? If we don’t leave now, we’re gonna be stuck. It’s coming down pretty hard.”

“Who is that?”

“My sister,” Yuuri says. “Stay here. There’s something going on. She shouldn’t even be here.”

“Why?”

“Because Viktor erased all her memories of me.”

Phichit and Chris both gape at him. Yuuri shrugs—he doesn’t want to explain—and goes to stand in the doorway. The wet floor is freezing under his feet.

“Did Yang send you?”

“Yang wanted me to shoot you in the head.”

“Are you going to?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“I have tea,” he says. “It’s Russian.”

“All right.”

She gets up and brushes herself off. Her hat is lying in the foyer; her scarf is askew. She looks like his dad. Yuuri watches her, stomach full of conflicted emotions, as she walks past him into the house. He doesn’t remember the last thing he said to her; he thinks it was something cruel, in retrospect, like ‘see you later.’

He follows her.

The four of them look out of place in the kitchen, with its subway tile backsplash and three times as many knives as needed for cooking. Yuuri sits besides Mari at the breakfast bar, and tries to ignore Phichit and Chris sitting at the kitchen table behind them. They’re bundled into their winter outerwear, and Mari’s jacket is stained with blood from her head wound, and Yuuri is in his pajamas, cheek stinging.

There’s water in the kettle; Yuuri flips the switch to turn it on.

“So,” she says.

“So.”

“You look different.”

“You don’t.” Yuuri glances around. “Did Yang send you?”

“No, I came on my own.”

“How’d you find me?”

“I’ve got ways.”

“Then...what do you want? I didn’t even think you…”

“Remembered you existed?”

“Yeah.”

Mari shrugs. “It came back, after a while. For most of us.”

“And you looked for me?”

“Did you think we wouldn’t?”

“Not for five years.”

Mari stares at him. Yuuri has to look away after a moment; he can’t imagine what it’s like, to know your own brother abandoned you. Yuuri isn’t stupid. He knows his family missed him. He’s missed them, after all.

“I’m surprised you didn’t know I was looking.”

“After he…” Yuuri trails off. “I asked him not to read your minds anymore.”

“So he didn’t?”

This time yesterday, Yuuri could have said yes unequivocally. Now he only says, “If he did, he never told me.”

“Maybe he was worried about you running off.”

“I doubt it.” There were no prohibitions on reading Yuuri’s mind, after all; Viktor would have known that Yuuri was at his disposal. _He threw me away,_ Yuuri thinks, and then stamps down on it. One problem at a time.

They sit there in silence until the kettle begins to scream. Yuuri gets four mugs out of the cabinet, and lets the tea bags steep once he’s filled them while he gets milk and sugar and jam. He adds milk and sugar to Phichit’s; nothing to Chris’s; sugar to his own, not that it matters, he doesn’t drink tea. Mari used to take hers with milk; does she still?

He splashes milk into the mug, hand shaking, and shoves it in her direction across the counter. Then he takes Chris and Phichit their mugs—Chris eyes his dubiously, does he think Yuuri is going to poison him?—and finally sits back down, within punching distance of Mari, again.

He drinks the tea. It’s awful, but it gives him something to do with his hands.

Mari glances into the mug, like she expects there to be something written in the curling steam, and then tastes it. She must not hate it; she drinks more deeply the second time.

“How are Mom and Dad?”

“Fine.”

“That’s good. Minako?”

“Same as ever.”

“Business?”

“Okay.”

“That’s good,” Yuuri says, inadequately. He’s been carefully trying not to think about his family for the past five years, ever since Viktor gave him a choice: come with him, and leave it all behind. Or stay, and be forgotten.

“So are you going to tell me _why_ you decided to leave town and never come back, or what?”

“I…”

“You know Mom cried when she remembered? She still makes katsudon on your birthday every year.”

“You weren’t supposed to ever remember. I thought you’d be fine.”

“That’s great. We’ve been looking for you for five years, worried that you were dead or kidnapped or god knows what. And you were just fucking around the entire time.” Mari downs more tea and looks around. “Where is he, anyway?”

“Who?”

“Your precious Viktor. I thought you two were always together.”

Yuuri should make an excuse. Mari using the same words Yang used bites. He should say something. Instead he bites his lip and looks down into his tea and says, in a wobbly voice that he barely recognizes, “He’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

“I don’t know. He…” Yuuri swallows; the truth is bitter on his tongue. “He left me, okay? I have no idea where he is.”

“He—”

“He doesn’t want me anymore and I’ve wasted the last five years of my life! Is that what you want to hear?” Chris says something to Phichit, too low for Yuuri to hear, and he whips around to glare at them. “What?”

They exchange a look, but say nothing.

“What?”

“Sorry,” Phichit says.

Yuuri wipes at his face, hating himself for crying. “It’s fine. What did Yang want, Mari?”

“No idea.”

Yuuri raises his eyebrows.

“She wanted me to help kidnap Viktor, but I never got the details on why. And she wasn’t kidnapping him for herself. Pretty sure someone paid her to grab him.”

“Then how’d you find me?”

“When I found out Viktor was your…” Mari shrugs. “I hung around after the job was over. Followed one of Yang’s goons. Tracked you back here. I don’t think Yang is looking for you.”

“Why isn’t she looking for us?” Chris asks.

“Whatever she wanted from Viktor? I think she got it.”

* * *

The snow falls heavily over Toronto for three days, until it’s kissing the windowsills and has made the front door impassable. The four of them are trapped inside, in a house that feels too small, in the awkward silence that comes off too many years of unshared history. Yuuri’s being buried alive.

Yuuri hates it. The very air in the house is tainted. Viktor’s scent is on the sheets, his pale hair tangled in the brush in the bathroom, the warmth in his body in the dent in the armchair where he used to sit. There’s no escaping Viktor—not in his own mind, and not with his fellow inmates. None of them, in the endless argument of what they ought to do in this impossible situation, ever say Viktor’s name in front of him. But he’s still there, in every word they say, mocking Yuuri with the proof of his own weakness.

Chris and Phichit want to leave Canada as soon as possible. Phichit thinks they need to investigate and wants to go somewhere where he’ll have access to more information; Chris wants to lay low until the danger passes. Mari wants Yuuri to come back with her to Japan. All three of them bicker about what the others should do.

Yuuri has no opinion. He wants out of this place, but he’s got nowhere to go. He’s got no idea what to do.

“Won’t Japan be the first place anyone looks for Yuuri?” Phichit asks.

“Not if they know none of us are supposed to remember him. Besides, why would anyone come after Yuuri if he’s gone?” Mari asks.

“Is he gone?” Chris says. “I hate to say this about him, but his kidnapping and then his disappearance…it looks like he might have been complicit in the entire thing. And he would know to look for Yuuri in Japan.”

Their living room is messier than Viktor would have ever allowed. There are three empty beer bottles on the kitchen table, and a stain on the white granite breakfast bar where someone set down a coffee cup without a saucer. The cheery paint, the shaggy carpet, the gleam of the fancy industrial bar stools, all of it is ugly in Yuuri’s eyes.

Did he really spend the last five years arguing about interior decorating and being coddled into domesticity? Did he really waste the past five years, without putting aside a cent for himself or an escape plan in place?

“If he comes near Yuuri ever again I’ll kill him.”

“How?” Chris asks. “No, the safest thing any of us can do is to go away until Yang and her conspirators stop looking.”

“What are you so afraid of, Chris?” Phichit asks. “Don’t you want to know what’s going on?”

“When you’re my age you’ll value being careful over being killed,” Chris says flatly. “Finding out what’s going on might be satisfying. But not as satisfying as being able to retire in my old age.”

It’s stiflingly warm in the house. Yuuri’s eyes are burning in the dry air; he’s run out of tears. His throat is raw. A monster is inside him, burrowing into all the fleshy places inside him where Viktor’s love had acted as armor. He wants to fight. He wants to run. He wants to breathe the wet cool air of the wintery air.

“We don’t know it’s that dangerous.”

“I’ve known him long enough to know what he’s capable of. Run headlong into danger if you like. I’m going to ground, and Yuuri and you should as well.” Chris shrugs. “You’re welcome to join me, Phichit.”

“But Yuuri isn’t?” Mari asks.

“I think if any of us are going to be hunted it’ll be him. It’s safer for everyone if he keeps him distance.”

“He’s coming home with me. He’ll be fine there, no one will be looking for him out there. I can work something out with Yang.”

“But—”

“Listen—”

“I’m not running.”

“Yuuri—” all three of them say.

“I’m not running.” Yuuri rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms. Their argument is grating on his last nerves. “I’m not afraid.”

“What about Mom and Dad?”

“It’s too dangerous,” Yuuri says flatly.

“Okay, but what’s your plan?” Phichit asks. He leans back in his chair. He’s sitting in Viktor’s seat. “Chris is right about one thing. You’re probably in more danger than the rest of us combined.”

They sit in silence as Yuuri grits his teeth and thinks. There’s not a place in the world he could hide, if Viktor were looking. There’s no one Yuuri could run to, not without risking their lives along with his own. Besides, the anger in him…it feels good.

The anger cuts through the grief, through the pain, like a scalpel through the delicate flesh of an exposed throat. When Yuuri focuses on the injustice of Viktor’s betrayal, he doesn’t have to think about the fact that he’s alone.

He disagrees with Chris; more information will be what keeps them alive, not less. Yuuri has no intention of dying either, and he can’t go on the defense.

He has to move.

“We need to interrogate someone who actually has answers.”

“Who?” Phichit asks. “I’ve been looking, but I’m tapped out. I need to get to my lab if you want to infiltrate—”

“She should still be here in Toronto.”

“Oh, no,” Chris moans.

“You want to kidnap Isabella Yang,” Mari says.

Yuuri nods.

“I need answers,” he says. “With or without any of you. Leave if you want. I understand.”

“I can’t be involved,” Mari says. “I know her.”

“I’m in.”

“I shouldn’t be,” Chris says. “I should let you children die. But fine, I’m in, too.”

“Get ready.” Yuuri stares past them, out the window, where everything is white and clean and silent. Not a sign of another human being; not a mark of the past. He closes his eyes, briefly, against the brightness of a clean slate. The snow has stopped; before long, the perfection of it will be spoiled forever.

It’s time to start digging his way out.

“We’re going in tonight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> man i hope u guys like suspense and angst bc that's where we are for the next few chapters :)


	8. forwards, backwards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s a simple three man job.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go! Plot time

It’s a simple three man job.

Yuuri retrieves the hostage. Phichit gets Yuuri through security. Chris handles the interrogation.

 _Simple,_ Yuuri tells himself. _Easy. Don’t freak out._

Mari heads back to Japan, after giving Yuuri her number; he promises to let her know what’s happening. They agree to try and meet in a few weeks, if things go well. It hurts to watch her go. Yuuri pushes Mari out of his mind; he can’t afford distractions.

“Thank you for seeing me so late,” Yuuri says.

He’s sitting in a plush leather chair. In front of him, on the other side of an enormous oak desk, is the lawyer. Said lawyer likes to sue corporations for damage to citizens injured by failure to comply with environmental regulations. Yuuri approves; he almost feels bad about what he’s about to do.

“Of course, of course. Now, I understand you have a problem. Tell me about it.”

Yuuri picks up the suitcase he’s brought with him, a large one, and with pretended difficulty heaves it on top of the desk. He unzips it to reveal pages and pages of documents. Most of them are in handwritten and illegible. There are grainy photocopies of the same pages over and over again. Mixed in are photographs of cardinals, chess pieces, and wine bottles.

“One word.” Yuuri leans in, playing up the fake Texas drawl he uses as a disguise. He’s altered the shape of his nose, his eyes and his vocal cords, as well. “Chemtrails.”

“Ah,” the lawyer says. Yuuri can see the enthusiasm drain out of him like water from a sieve. “Well—”

“They _made_ my dog _gay.”_

“Sir—”

“I have all the proof right here.” Yuuri thrusts a sheaf of random documents at him. The top one just has ‘chicken wings’ written on it repeatedly.

The lawyer takes the sheaf gingerly, which is a mistake; Yuuri grabs another pile of them and drops them on the floor of the office. He continues throwing the papers on the floor as the lawyer protests, and then scowls, and then threatens to call security.

“You’re one of _them,_ aren’t you? The hedgehog people.” Yuuri looks darkly at him. He can hear Phichit snickering in his earpiece. “I’m watching you.”

He picks up the empty suitcase and rolls it out of the lawyer’s office, the open lid flapping, and stomps down the hall and into an empty office. There are no cameras inside the law firm past the lobby, to preserve client privacy. So there is no one to see Yuuri shed his shapeshifted disguise, and no one to see him strap a pane of glass to his back, hide the suitcase beneath the desk, and dislodge one of the ceiling tiles so he can climb in.

He chose this office because it shares a wall with the elevator shaft. Once he’s laying flat in the ceiling, he rips through the drywall with his bare hands. He finds a seam and pries apart the steel panels that make up the wall of the shaft, until there’s an opening just large enough for Yuuri to crawl through. He wishes they had more time, to put together a more discreet method of infiltration; Yuuri hopes that no one will look in the walls any time soon.

He puts on the goggles that will let him see the laser grid in the shaft.

“How’s it going?” Phichit asks.

“Fine,” Yuuri grunts. He’s hanging on the elevator cables with both hands, body held horizontally as he claws his way up. The thirty feet between the law firm and Yuuri’s destination feels like thirty miles.

He contorts himself, sometimes only hanging on with a few fingers or a knee, avoiding the bars of light that bisect the shaft. He’s not sure exactly what would happen if he touched one. Maybe it would just set off an alarm. Maybe Yang’s rigged the whole shaft to go up in flames.

Slowly, delicately, Yuuri emerges from the maze of lasers. From there it’s easy to jump to the wall.

The elevator shaft shares a wall with the exterior of the building. There are vents placed periodically; Yuuri unscrews it and uses a magnet to attach it to the side of the shaft,

Then he slides out into the open air—it’s shockingly cold, and Yuuri’s eyes water—and grips the narrow stone edge where Yang’s window is set into the side of the building. The glass is one-way, bulletproof. Yuuri takes a deep breath. If he loses his balance here, he’ll die.

If Viktor was here—

If Viktor was here, he wouldn’t have let Yuuri take this kind of risk.

But Yuuri might have done it anyways. He’s always been stubborn. He’s not going to give that up now, when he’s already lost so much.

He does before he can think about it—flips himself over to slam his feet into the window with all the force he can muster—scrapes his fingertips raw—pops the glass out of the frame and lands in Yang’s office.

She doesn’t even get the chance to scream. Yuuri stabs the syringe of ketamine-C into her thigh and it knocks her out cold.

He did it.

Yuuri allows himself a brief moment of triumph before remembering he has to do it all again, backwards, while carrying Yang’s unconscious body. Maybe Chris had a point when he said they were taking unnecessary risks.

The window hasn’t shattered; it’s broken into four large, mostly intact pieces, which meant it made less noise. Yuuri hurriedly wraps them in the velvet he used to bring up the intact pane, then takes off the harness he has on beneath his clothes and uses it to secure Yang to his back. He ties her wrists and ankles together so they won’t flap around and hit the laser grid.

Then comes the most dangerous part of the whole plan. Yuuri climbs awkwardly out of the window, digs his toes into what tiny handholds exist, and fits the new window in place of the old one. He takes a tube of superglue and runs it around the edge to hold it in place. Hopefully this will help conceal Yang’s kidnapping for longer, and confuse her crew when they go looking for her.

“Yuuri?”

“Got her,” Yuuri says over the howl of the wind. “I’m on my way down.”

“You’re clear in the shaft for another five minutes.”

“Okay.”

Once Yuuri is through the elevator shaft (Phichit risked turning off the laser grid so Yuuri could slide down), he breaks back into the empty office he started in. He hogties Yang and puts her in the suitcase, fixes his disguise, and leaves the firm. The receptionist is gone this late in the evening; the clink of glass and the slosh of liquid suggest that the poor lawyer is drinking in his office. He makes it out of the building and into the car without incident, taking care to keep up his persona of irrational conspiracy theorist the whole way by muttering about Alex Jones and the Arby’s Illuminati the whole way.

Chris has set up their interrogation site already. Yuuri checks on Yang one last time before heading out—ketamine-C has a low risk of respiratory depression, as it was developed for use in prisons that hold dangerous powered offenders, but still—and then drives to where Phichit is waiting to check Yang for embedded trackers.

 

* * *

 

Chris has set up in an abandoned Walgreens; it smells like old lipstick and is littered with broken glass. But the boarded up windows keep out prying eyes, and the post-apocalyptic decor—the empty wire racks, the dirty footprints, the smears of what is probably melted makeup but looks like blood—make it relatively anonymous. Even if Yang’s people can track down the Walgreens, it won’t link back to the three of them.

“You and Phichit stay out of sight. I’ll talk to her.”

“Chris—”

“You’re too close to this.”

Chris is right. It just chafes at Yuuri to have been given the easiest part of the job. Phichit is going to be on security, keeping an eye out for activity on Yang’s end. Chris is going to do the actual interrogation. That leaves Yuuri to listen for intruders and wait, which is important, but also the part of the job that requires the least brainpower. He knows rationally it’s not a slight, but he keeps thinking about Viktor saying When have I ever needed you? and feeling the itch to prove himself.

Viktor used to have a way of reassuring Yuuri about things like this—not necessarily with words, but just a sense of pride in Yuuri’s abilities he could project. (Viktor was prone to occasionally saying exactly the wrong thing. Had been prone. Yuuri has no idea anymore.)

They tie Yang to a chair with zip ties, and blindfold her using the torn remains of a towel. Yuuri sweeps the floor around the chair clean, so that there’s nothing sharp in range of her feet she could use to free herself. The chair itself is secured by the simple expedient of Yuuri forcing the legs through the floor. With smudged lipstick, and disheveled hair, and her head lolling under the effects of the ketamine-C, she looks helpless.

But that won’t be the case when she’s awake, so Yuuri retreats with Phichit behind one of the shelves, where they’ve set up a screen so they can watch the interrogation via webcam. Yuuri sits down on a hard plastic chair, legs crossed, and toys with a leftover lipstick tube as he focuses his hearing. There’s the ambient traffic from the streets nearby, the hum of electronics, the conversation in the building across the street, all of which he considers and discards. Then he listens for the sounds that will matter: fast approaching cars, weapons being loaded, frantic or tense voices.

And then they wait. The ketamine-C takes time to wear off, and none of them had any of the counteracting drug on hand. Eventually Yuuri hears Yang’s breathing change, and her heartbeat pick up, and he stomps twice on the floor to let Chris know.

“Good afternoon,” Chris says. It’s the middle of the night. “How are you, Isabella?”

“If you let me go now,” Yang says, “I’ll have you killed quickly.”

“If you answer my questions, I won’t dose you with aphrodin and leave you here,” Chris replies.

Yuuri winces; aphrodin is a street drug used by date rapists and pimps. It causes intense sexual arousal and a highly suggestible mental state, but even a slight overdose leaves the victim confused and paralyzed. Yuuri’s been drugged with it twice, but both times Viktor was there to immediately administer the counteragent. He doubts Chris would really do such a thing, but even the brief memories Yuuri has of the drug are unpleasant.

“Who are you?” Yang asks. “If you’re with my buyers in Paris, I can tell you now, this isn’t going to make your shipment arrive any faster.”

“I’m hurt, Yang. Have you forgotten me already?”

Chris uses a yardstick to push up Yang’s blindfold without going near her. Yang keeps her eyes closed for a moment, then slowly opens them, blinking rapidly to adjust to the light. She looks around, then directly at Chris. She stares at him.

“Sorry,” she says coolly. “But I don’t remember you. If you’re the grunt of some idiot trying to muscle in on my business…I don’t pay attention to the help.”

Phichit nudges Yuuri in the ribs. “Is she serious?”

Yuuri shrugs. He whispers, “I don’t know. Maybe she thinks she can bluff her way out.”

“You don’t remember me? All right. Does the name Viktor Nikiforov ring a bell?”

“No.”

“This will go easier if you tell the truth.”

“Why should I lie? I’m tied to a chair. That name means nothing to me.”

Chris rolls his eyes. He goes on talking, but Yuuri stops listening. He has a sudden thought. _What if Yang isn’t bluffing? What if she’s telling the truth? What if she really doesn’t remember?_

It would be a huge undertaking, erasing an entire kidnapping. _Too many minds to wipe,_ Yuuri thinks, _too many chances to attract attention. Why would he do that? It’s not his style at all. It’s not like Hasetsu, where he only had to edit himself out of a few days of memories, in a seaside town where nothing important ever happened…_

_Viktor told me he never did things like that, that he only did it to them because he loved me, that he never took those kinds of risks._

He taps his earpiece. “Chris?”

Chris doesn’t respond verbally, but he makes a hand gesture onscreen to signal he’s heard.

“Check her eyes.” Yuuri swallows. “See if she can track your finger with her eyes without nystagmus.”

To Yuuri’s relief, Chris shows no signs of confusion at his request. He leads the conversation with Yang around in circles, then mockingly asks if she’s hit her head before offering to make sure. When she sneers, he draws his gun on her. Yuuri watches with his teeth grit, barely listening to anything around him; the camera quality isn’t good enough for him to see Yang’s eyes.

There are different causes of nystagmus. Head injuries. Vertigo. Astigmatism. And telepathic interference.

“Can she track?” Chris taps his leg twice for ‘no’. “Forget it. Her memory’s been edited.”

Phichit draws up a syringe of ketamine-C with Yuuri’s guidance—apparently he’s not used to drugging people—which Chris steps around the shelf to collect. They watch as Chris injects her with it. Once she’s out, they put her back in the suitcase, still restrained.

“Well?” Chris asks.

“It’s Viktor,” Yuuri says. “He got to her. Probably to everyone involved.”

“He can do that?” Phichit says.

“Yeah.”

“That’s freakish,” Phichit says frankly. “Kind of worries me that you apparently stayed with him for five years. How close would he have to be to do that? I mean, can we see if Yang’s people are anywhere else?”

“He could do it from the other side of the planet if he absolutely had to, I think,” Yuuri says. “But a couple hundred miles wouldn’t be an issue. He could be in another country by now.”

“Could he implant new memories?” Chris asks.

“Yeah.”

“Then why not do that? It would be better for him if she was coming after us, wouldn’t it?”

“Unless he’s got something to hide,” Phichit says.

They all look at each other, no doubt thinking the same thing. Yuuri shudders. If Viktor is willing to break his own rules to get them off the trail, there’s not much they can do. There’s no guarantee following the trail further won’t get their minds wiped. _And yet,_ Yuuri thinks, _Viktor could have wiped all three of our memories before he left, easily. He could have, and he didn’t._

“Something’s not adding up,” Yuuri says.

“I still think we need more information,” Phichit says, “but if Viktor can just erase people’s brains, I don’t see how we’re going to get it.”

“My offer to hide you at my Swiss chalet is still open,” Chris says.

There’s the screech of tires outside, and Yuuri curses. He’s been so distracted, he’s missed the arrival of what sounds like two carfuls of Yang’s men, with weapons and with flaring tempers. They’re getting into position; it’s still possible to escape if they hurry.

“Grab the camera, we’ve got company!”

“Fuck,” Chris says.

He rolls Yang into a back room while Phichit throws the computer and camera into his bag and shoulders it. Yuuri goes out the back and drags a dumpster to block the entrance to the alley where the back door opens; it should give them a few extra minutes to reach their getaway car. Chris and Phichit are close behind him as they climb a nearby fire escape and from there drop down to a side street one by one. There’s a Honda sedan there, ten years old and grey, trunk loaded.

Phichit distributes their new IDs while Chris drives and Yuuri deliberates.

“Where are we going?” Phichit finally asks. They’re pulling up at the airport.

“I don’t know,” Yuuri admits. “We need more information, but if we can’t ask anyone, I don’t know how we’re going to get it.”

“It would help if Viktor didn’t have, like, nine thousand fake identities,” Phichit says. “If we at least had a real name or a birth date, we could work from there.”

_What’s your name? Your real name._

_Viktor Nikiforov._

“I have an idea,” Yuuri says. “Can we dump this car?”

“I stole it from this airport’s long term parking so I could bring it back without trouble and we could flee,” Chris says. He stops at the booth to scan his parking ticket; Phichit wiggles his fingers at the machine and the bar blocking the entrance to the garage lifts. “Why?”

“I want to go to St. Petersburg.”

“Russia?”

“To do what?”

“…look for hospital fires.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are much appreciated!


	9. can't remember to forget you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s six weeks before they find something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the wait! enjoy

It’s six weeks before they find something.

“Hey, do we have anything on Yubileyny Private Hospital?”

Yuuri glances over the notes—as the only one of them that speaks Russian, he’s in charge of keeping track of their discoveries—but doesn’t see anything. So far, they’ve yet to find even one suspiciously burned down hospital. No fires, no mysteriously missing archives, no sudden electronic medical records failures or breaches anywhere in or near St. Petersburg. They’ve checked all the hospitals older than ten years, but have found nothing.

Of course, it’s possible that the information was removed discreetly enough that there is no trace. And it’s possible that Yuuri has the location wrong.

“Nothing,” he says. “Why?”

“Uh, because I just found an obituary listing it as a place that this nurse who died last year used to work at,” Phichit says. “Here, look over it, tell me what the whole thing says. I can only read like three words of this.”

He turns the screen to face Yuuri. It’s an announcement in a local paper of the death of a elderly woman, dated last week. She worked as a nurse with sick children; whoever wrote this last tribute to her must have loved her, Yuuri thinks, as there is a whole paragraph devoted to the deceased’s compassion and understanding. There’s no more information about Yubileyny there.

_Probably nothing,_ Yuuri thinks, but a hospital none of them have heard of? They have to follow up on it.

“Does it list the surviving family?” Chris asks.

“Looks like there’s a niece.”

“It’s something,” Phichit muses. “And it’s all we have for now.”

He doesn’t say that this six week search has been frustratingly fruitless so far. They’ve pretty much exhausted all the electronic resources, and with only Yuuri speaking Russian searching through paper files is a monumental task. If they had any way to narrow their search at all, it would be easier. But there’s nothing. Five years, five fucking years Yuuri lived and breathed every moment at Viktor’s side, and he never pressed Viktor for answers. He thought he was being clever, figuring out a few tidbits and keeping quiet to spare Viktor’s feelings. What a gullible little fool he’s been.

_Don’t think about him._

“I’ll go talk to her,” Yuuri says distantly. He thinks of Viktor coaxing him to Detroit because you’re lonely, darling, and chokes back a laugh. “You guys keep looking.”

St. Petersburg is both alien and familiar. There are glimpses of things Yuuri knows: the signs in Russian, phrases he knows in the overheard conversation of passersby, the brand of toothpaste Viktor favored on sale in a shop window. But St. Petersburg is distinct from Moscow, too: it has an old world charm, feels smaller. Yuuri has never been here before. He’s always suspected, based on the way Viktor used to structure their travel plans, that Viktor avoids the city.

The directions on his phone are accurate enough; Yuuri finds himself outside an apartment building, staring up at the windows and wondering what the hell he’s doing.

(It looks like their old building, the place in Moscow where he and Viktor had lived for the first six months. It looks like the dim old place, with the alley where Viktor used to leave out food for stray dogs that he and Yuuri adopted, where after the hasty courthouse wedding they’d crept in, late at night and half-drunk with desire. It looks like that place, where Yuuri had laid beside Viktor, fucked out and too in love with him, and decided to give him everything.)

_Stop thinking about him and get back to work,_ he thinks. There’s hardly any security. He climbs the stairs until he reaches the third floor, then walks down the hallway to the address he’s got written down. There are two bulbs out in the hallway. The paint on the walls is peeling. The welcome mat he ends up standing on is a perfect duplicate of the one he and Viktor had at the first place they ever lived together, and Yuuri has to close his eyes before he gets up the nerve to knock.

The door opens immediately, just enough to reveal the face of a worn, middle-aged woman.

“Can I help you?”

“Are you Alina Petrova?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I’m Agent Nishigori with Interpol,” Yuuri lies. He hands over his fake badge. “I’d like to ask you a few questions about your aunt, Malvina.”

“My aunt? My aunt is dead.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here talking to you.”

“What’s this about? My aunt was a wonderful woman. She never did anything wrong.”

“Your aunt worked at Yubileyny Private Hospital, correct?”

All the blood drains out of Alina’s pinched face. Her mouth opens, then closes; she looks, for a moment, afraid. Yuuri takes the chance and pushes while he has her off balance.

“May I come in?”

She pulls the door wide open wordlessly. Yuuri follows her inside.

It’s a small apartment, plain and dark, mostly decorated in shades of olive and brown. But everything is clean and neat, with no clutter on the tables or counters; the blanket over the back of the couch is folded, the three books on the coffee table have been arranged artfully. Yuuri ignores her attempts to seat him on the couch in favor of walking around the living room, examining things at random, watching.

He has no idea what Alina knows, if anything; he has no idea what there is to know. So he’ll have to interrogate her carefully. If she guesses that he’s just taking shots in the dark, she’ll cease to be afraid of him.

“You work as a nurse as well?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Because of your aunt?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did she tell you about Yubileyny before or after the fire?”

“She didn’t tell me. She was sick, at the end. She didn’t know what she was saying. And she said that she used to work there. But nothing else!”

“But your aunt worked at Yubileyny for a long time. You never wondered where she worked?”

“I was young…”

“I thought you and your aunt were close.”

“She kept it a secret to protect me!”

“I thought you said she never told you anything.”

Yuuri circles behind her, watching her shoulders tremble as he paces back and forth. The slow, deliberate sound of his footsteps—that’s a trick he learned from Viktor, using the metronome of his own walk to build up the tension until people burst without him saying a word.

There are photographs on the wall in cheap plastic frames.

(Yuuri’s parents had frames like these—two reviews of the onsen from days gone by, two fading family photographs—hung crooked in the hallway.)

The first is Alina as a child, with her parents. The second is Alina and Malvina, both much younger, at Alina’s graduation—she’s in a cap and gown, and Malvina is crying. The third photograph is of Alina and a dark-skinned little girl with cornrows and braces.

Yuuri lingers over the second photograph, trying to gauge her reaction, but it’s when he looks at her and the little girl’s picture that she seems afraid. Her jaw tightens, and she picks up a coaster and then sets it down again hurriedly.

“Why don’t you have a seat,” he says.

She sits. Yuuri watches the stiff way she holds her head, and listens harder until he can hear her heart pounding, and realizes there’s someone else in the apartment. Another heartbeat, slow and steady, accompanied by the whistling noise of someone snoring through a congested nose.

He stabs in the dark.

“Your daughter...she was one of the children Malvina kidnapped from the hospital after the fire.”

“Please don’t take her away!” Alina bursts out. She wrings her hands. She steps toward him, eyes wide and desperate, shifting her body so that she’s between him and the direction of the girl’s heartbeat. “She’s not dangerous at all. All she can do is see people’s dreams. Only their dreams, never when they are awake. She’s a good girl. She has no one else. Please.”

Yuuri pretends to be thinking about it. He pretends he’s Viktor and taps his lip with his fingertip, as if in thought.

“It might be possible for her to stay.” Yuuri sits down now, across from her. It takes so much effort for him to keep his hands loose in his lap. He leans in. He feels a little sick, exploiting this woman’s love for her daughter, but he can’t help himself; it’s not as if the girl is in any real danger. If she gives him what he wants, Yuuri’ll disappear.

This woman, with her stolen child and her secrets, with her adoration of an aunt for her kindness—will she break, if Yuuri pushes? Or will she harden?

This kind of intense interrogation isn’t really Yuuri’s thing. Viktor is the one who ties people in knots; Yuuri prefers a softer touch. (Then again, Viktor had spent five years being sweet and soft to Yuuri. Maybe he’d preferred a soft touch too.)

“Your aunt was very attached to the children at Yubileyny, wasn’t she?” Yuuri leans in confidentially. “She took good care of them.”

“She was devastated when it burned down. That was the only reason she told me, because she needed help finding them new homes. Some of those children had never left the hospital, sir. They didn’t have families. My aunt Malvina only wanted them to be safe.”

“Did she tell you who started the fire?”

Alina’s mouth dropped open. “What?”

“She didn’t, then. Good.” Yuuri improvises. He debates his next course of action. “It seems that you’ve been very discreet, Alina. I think we can come to an arrangement where your daughter isn’t involved.”

“Of course—anything—”

“One last thing. Why did you mention the hospital by name in the obituary?”

Yuuri watches Alina’s face closely as she blinks at him, frowns. She looks genuine as she shakes her head. She looks like she’s telling the truth. Her heart isn’t beating any faster. But looks can be deceiving.

“There was no obituary.” Phichit printed out the section of the paper for him; Yuuri produces it now, like the mark’s card in a shell game, and lays it on the coffee table between them. Alina reads it twice before she lays it back down, shaking her head. “No, I never wrote this.”

“And you haven’t told anyone else?”

“No one. Not even my daughter. Once the adoption was finalized, we never spoke of it until her death.” She wipes at her eyes. Yuuri looks around wildly while she tries to compose herself, and seizes the nearest tissue box. He thrusts it at her.

An ice cold chill goes down Yuuri’s spine. If Alina didn’t write this obituary—this obituary that mentions both Yubileyny and her by name—that means someone else did, someone who knew enough to guess Yuuri might come looking. He looks again at Alina, staring into her eyes, trying to tell if she can track. There are signs of telepathic tampering that Yuuri knows to look for. It’s just that Viktor has demonstrated to Yuuri more than once that he’s powerful enough to avoid all of them.

_He could read your mind,_ Yuuri thinks scathingly. _How do you know you figured anything out? Maybe he set this entire thing up to play with you._

“Thank you for confirming our information,” Yuuri lies, on the off chance someone is observing him. He takes a business card out of his pocket and throws it down onto the table between them. “I’m glad you decided to be truthful.”

Without another word, he leaves the apartment. He hears Alina lock the door behind him; her footsteps are light and fast as she runs, presumably to her daughter. He makes his way back to their hideout, but he takes a long and circuitous path, over bridges and through whatever parts of the city are the most crowded, just in case he’s being followed.

What does he know, really? That there was a hospital that burned down? That one child was stolen? That’s nothing. There are no records, no real proof, no sign that this is anything more than a tragic accident forgotten by history. Yuuri wishes he could remove Viktor from his heart as easily as St. Petersburg has removed all traces of Yubileyny Private Hospital.

_But no,_ Yuuri thinks, as he forces himself not to think about Viktor. Alina had not seem surprised that a mysterious Interpol agent was looking for her. Frightened, but not surprised. _There’s something here for sure._

Even if Viktor planned this whole thing, the fact that he planned it will tell them something.

“That’s what you used to say, isn’t it?” he says bitterly, in Japanese so that passersby stare. “That the lies people chose to tell told you as much as the truth would?” He swallows heavily. “You stole that from Hercule Poirot. It’s not even that impressive.”

He used to go for walks in Moscow. He’d run for an hour, to keep in shape, and then sometimes he’d just wander, practicing his Russian, trying to read people. Sometimes he and Viktor would play a game, where Yuuri would make guesses and then Viktor would use his telepathy to see if Yuuri was right. They took turns walking the dogs. They—

Yuuri slows as he approaches the building where Chris and Phichit are waiting. He can’t be thinking about Viktor when he sees them; they’ll know. He lingers outside the front door for a few minutes, the cold wind chapping his aching face—the shapeshifted bones feel the winter more—before he gives up and ducks inside.

He trudges up the stairs, face shifting back into shape, and gives the code knock before letting himself into the apartment. Phichit’s sitting at the table where Yuuri left him. His arm is under the table in a way that suggests he reached for his gun under the table when Yuuri opened the door. That’s good; more weapons experience can only improve Phichit’s chances of survival.

“Oh, thank fuck, you’re back,” Phichit says. He closes his laptop. “Did you give your number to Alina Petrova?”

“She called? I was just _there_ —”

“She called freaking out because your colleague kidnapped her kid,” Phichit says flatly. “Chris speaks more Russian than I do, I recorded the call, I think she described whoever showed up at her place, but we need you to translate.”

Yuuri snatches a pair of headphones off the table and grabs for some paper and a pen. “Go.”

“Agent Nishigori?” The recording is a little staticky. Yuuri dials up his hearing in case there’s something in the background he might miss. “There’s a man here, he’s taking my daughter—you said if I cooperated it would be all right—they say that my aunt should never have—” Something is smashed in the background. Yuuri hears glass break. “They won’t listen to me—” A thump, and a cry that is muffled like the phone is away from Alina’s mouth...and then silence.

“Shit,” Yuuri hisses. “She must have done it herself!”

“What?”

“Malvina Petrova arranged that obituary herself,” Yuuri explains. “Alina told me she didn’t write it. Who else would know about the hospital and want to expose it! I’m an idiot. Fuck.” He scrambles for his shoes. “We have to go.”

He snatches up one of the burner phones and calls Alina back. The phone rings once, twice, three times, achingly slow, pick up, come on, pick up—

“Hello?”

“Alina Petrova? This is Agent Nishigori.” Even as Yuuri says it, he knows. No gasp, no cry, no desperation; she answers him with perfect composure.

“I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong number.”

“It’s about your daughter!”

“I don’t have a daughter.”

She hangs up.

_Well,_ Yuuri thinks, dizzy with pain and confusion and anger and guilt. _That answers the question of whether a telepath is involved._

“I need to go.”

“Don’t bother,” Chris says. Yuuri looks up to see him standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the hallway where the two tiny bedrooms and tha bath are. “I found this.” he tosses a flat white envelope onto the table.

Gingerly, Phichit prods it with a pen before opening it.

Inside is a photograph of Yuuri outside Alina’s apartment building. And on the back is a time and place, dated three days from now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this will probably be my last update for a while! i'm on hiatus from July 1st--Oct 1st (tentatively) while I start school. hopefully after 3 months i will have acclimated enough to have a little writing time :)
> 
> thanks for reading! please continue to comment. you can track my writing projects on tumblr @ pencilwalla!


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